Queen of the Sith
by gythia
Summary: A sequel to Planet of the Sith and Subcasters. Dije fights the Vong and returns from Sithta during the GA upheavel. Time Yarns crossover.
1. Chapter 1

Return to the Planet of the Sith

first in the Queen of the Sith series.

"It's been a long time, Dije," said Luke. "You've had a strange career already."

"And it's about to get stranger," Dije said, smiling faintly. "This is good-bye forever. Going through the resealed Blockade is a one way trip." In the resealed areas, New Republic tech allowed ships to land, but none to leave. In the original Blockade areas, ships could not fly at all.

"Perhaps not. I've seen a vision in the Force. You and I, older."

"What were we doing?"

"Sparring. I hope, anyway."

"Fighting with lightsabers, you mean."

"Yes."

Dije shrugged. "Who knows? Perhaps you'll travel to Sith-ta yourself someday. When you tire of the teaching life."

"I already have. I never wanted to be a teacher. I'm a man of action. But to rebuild the Jedi Order, I had to have other Jedi. So I had to train them."

"Say good-bye to Anakin for me?"

"He doesn't know you're a Jedi, Dije. You said your farewells long ago."

"Yes. That was a moment of self-indulgence. Of course, keep the secret. Both our secrets."

"Are you ready to start your own Jedi Order?"

"I wouldn't exactly call it that."

"That's what it will be, effectively. Though we can write, of course. You're sure they'll let you keep your translation?"

"Sure. It's ancient Sith history. Totally uncontroversial. I'm more worried about the lightsaber. But thanks to the events on the planetoid, however many years ago that was, I can honestly say I took it away from you."

Luke tried to smile; the expression only touched half his face, and looked rather odd. "Spoils of war?"

"Lots of Sith bring home trophies. And it is legal to bring back a weapon, as long as it isn't military grade. Knives yes, guns no. Occasional exotic arms. Though this is probably going to be one of the most exotic ones. The customs clerks will probably take vid of it to show their friends."

"So, the question remains. Are you ready?"

"I'm ready, Luke. No ceremony needed."

"Then I formally confer on you the rank of Master. And may the Force be with you."

The whoosh of escaping air is every spacer's nightmare. Kerruke had to Force open the door of her quarters, against vacuum pressure. She pounded down the corridor and saw an even worse nightmare: one of her twins holding onto the airlock door, the streaks of hyperspace behind him.

She screamed and plucked him from the airlock, then hit the door control and closed the airlock doors. They slid closed, the rush of air stopped, and the lights on the airlock controls went green. Vents refilled the corridor with the stale emergency atmosphere.

Kerruke hugged the child tightly to her bosom, shaking in relief. Then she realized what must have happened.

"Piker! You bad boy! Do not open airlocks! Bad bad bad!" Kerruke punctuated her words with smacks to the rear echelon.

Little Piker wailed and squirmed.

Then a new and horrible thought occurred to Kerruke. "Where's your sister? Where's Piekke?"

The boy cried louder and did not respond. Kerruke reached out in the Force for her daughter, and found her, safely aboard ship and asleep. She went back to her quarters, a hand over her son's mouth to quiet his crying, and found Piekke right where she was supposed to be, in bed in the side room that used to be the Captain's dressing room.

Kerruke carried Piker back out, so she would not wake Piekke with her yelling. "You could not have reached those controls. You must have used the Force to open the door."

"Opened it on Carilon. There were trees outside. I only wanted to climb a tree."

"This is a spaceship!" Kerruke shouted. "It moves around! Sometimes it's in space!"

"I'm sorry!" he wailed.

"If you ever do anything that stupid again—if you survive that is—I'll have my men hold you in a suppression field until you're old enough to be trusted to use the Force responsibly. Do you understand?"

He started crying again, and Kerruke felt Piekke wake up behind the wall, responding to her twin's mood.

"Now look what you've done," Kerruke added in exasperation. "Alright, go inside and play nice with your sister. We won't be living on a ship much longer. We're following Lady Dije home to Sith-ta. She's going to take a nice rural Territory. Someplace good for raising children. With lots of trees. It'll be alright." Her words were meant to be soothing, but her voice still clearly seethed with anger. Kerruke may not have been bent on galactic domination like Dokhon Jux or Emperor Palpatine, but she was still a Sith.

Kerruke put him down and he scampered into their quarters.

In fact, Dije had already selected the territory she wanted to take, because it bordered on Fruitioner lands and had few territorial rivals.

Sith Raider docked at the transfer station. Dije, Kerruke and her children, and about a third of the crew left the ship, towing their possessions behind them with the Force.

The crew elected a new capt: Imei-Sim Arr, who henceforth went by Lord Capt. Arr. He turned pirate and had much success. His name became a byword and a battle cry, and even far in the future in another galaxy, pirates called out his name: Arr!

After shuttling down to Kamex Spaceport, the company got rooms in the transients' hotel. Sith were only allowed to stay there one night, and then had to be gone to a Sithtown or worker's dormitory. Dije, Kerruke and the twins, and Siaru Ilmars, shared a room, while the troops, Rejak Stron, Zispur Fiex, Danix Nith ("Dan"), Ni Smashlier, and Vil Robious ("Rob"), shared another. The hotel had not had enough rooms to go around that day.

Kerruke wanted to help Dije take her new territory, but there was no one on the planet but her own crew that she would trust with her children, and everyone else wanted to go too. So Kerruke rented an apartment, sight unseen, in a nearby Territory, transferring the credits over the computer in the hotel room. She hoped the building would not have too many insect pests. She would stay there until called for.

Kerruke's crew escorted her to her new home and helped her move in and clean up. They all stored their possessions there, to be moved to Dije's new Territory—or to be picked up after Dije's death, should she fail.

Dije went with them as far as the border, but of course had to turn back there. For a Dark Lady to enter another Lord or Lady's territory was to declare war.

Dije found herself alone on the streets of Kamex as the night came down. She remembered when she had been afraid to walk these streets at night by herself. Those days were long gone. She almost hoped to meet another group of drunken soldiers, picturing herself turning to face them, showing her cheeks tattoos, and saying, "Think again." But she was so much more than a Dark Lady now. Dark Lady, illusionist, Jedi Master: Dije walked with the smug, possessed confidence of a suicide bomber, and sober men crossed to the other side of the street to avoid her.

She spent the night at a holotheater, watching out of date holodramas that had played on Coruscant when she was still the subject of the Serial Killer subcast. In the morning she met up with the crew and they took a slow train to the Sacred Lands. Dije slept fitfully. About mid day she gave up and meditated instead, which was far more restful. They rented pack beasts and camping gear, and trekked around the edge of the Sacred Lands, taking a full day to reach within an hour of their destination, and made camp for the night.

Dije discovered she was the only one there who knew how to cook. The rest of the former mercenaries only knew how to program a ship's food synthesizer. Only Dije had ever handled real food, made from farmed ingredients, in a pan over a campfire. Well, of course, she told herself; when would a normal Sith ever go to a Fruitioner festival in the Sacred Lands? Fortunately, she was not the only one who knew how to pitch a tent. That was well within the military skills of at least half the mercenaries.

Again Dije had trouble sleeping. She woke up out of a nightmare of liquid bruises splashing onto her, and for a few moments after waking she still felt something pressing down on her, a breath-stealing weight on her chest, something lying on her keeping her legs immobile.

When the sensation passed she sprang out of her sleeping bag, stuffed her feet into her boots and went out into the cold of predawn. She restarted the campfire with a simple thought of acceleration, moving the molecules in the charred wood. She held her hands to the paltry heat and found they were shaking, and not with the cold.

There was no mistaking what that nightmare had been about. It was a nightmare about Luke. And Purple Tears.

With a burst of angry denial, Dije woke the flames to greater heat. "Why is that still bothering me? It's been years. Well, I'm just nervous about the fight tomorrow. It doesn't mean anything. I'm certainly not going to try to go back to sleep now, though. Well, I'm up, I might as well make breakfast."

She got a pan and started heating up some toast. Dije softly hummed a Fruitioner calming song.

This impending duel was what she had been preparing for all her life. She was at the height of her power, and had advantages no Sith had possessed in centuries. But now that the moment finally approached, she was nervous. The slow pre-combat adrenalin feed killed her appetite, but she made herself eat the lovely Fruitioner fruits and breads they had bought at the camping store, to fuel her power and to honor the Fruitioners who had grown them, and their gods, and Fala.

The other mercenaries woke up and wandered by ones and twos to the campfire. Whatever awkwardness they had felt last night about their Lady cooking for them had vanished, and they gladly held out plates for her to flip toast into from the black iron pan.

Then Dan and Rejak reached the fire together, and Dan shoved Rejak out of the way. Rejak elbowed Dan back, and suddenly they both dropped their empty plates, held up their palms in Force-shoving position and started trying to push each other over with the Force.

"Stop it, you two," Dije ordered curtly.

The two men staggered back from each other's attacks and then ran at each other like gladiators starting a match. Dan's hands went around Rejak's throat and then Rejak pulled a knife.

Dije snatched the knife away with the Force, and Force-pushed them away from each other. Then she stepped in between them and held her fingers out, one hand toward each face, in an unmistakable gesture of threat. "I said stop it!"

Dan snarled, but neither man had a taste for the lightning. No Sith did. They both backed off.

"It's angasine," Dije said. "From the food and water in port, and on the train. It will pass. The food I've bought for us is pure-source, and in my new Territory we'll be barely a five minute walk from open fields. We'll be able to have farmers deliver pure-source right to us. In the meantime just try to get ahold of yourselves. We've all been off it for years, but try to remember how to deal with it."

"Of course, my Lady," Rejak affirmed.

"Yes, Lady Dije," Dan grated.

Dije dropped her hands and went back to the campfire. "Burned the toast," she said. "Here." She tore the burned piece in half and telekinetically sailed one half to each man. "The bitter taste of pointless rivalry. No, you don't have to eat it. I'm not your mother."

Dan threw down his piece, stomped on it, and then stalked off into the woods.

Rejak tore a chunk off his piece of burned toast and tossed it to a small mammal scampering around the trees. "You don't resemble my mother at all, Lady Dije. She's a first class kriffing beikro, and a deathstick addict."

"Ah. You hate her. Well, at least she did one thing right."

"I'd trade away half my power for that, that, peace you seem to have, My Lady."

"Truly?"

"Yes."

"Good. Because that's what it takes. Make no mistake, the Dark Side is stronger. It's just a miserable way to live."

"I've thought a lot about what you've taught us, My Lady. About the light, and about the white current. I have no talent for illusion at all. But after you take your Territory, I'd be honored if you would have me as your Jedi apprentice."

Dije nodded softly. "And you will be. This is what I've come home for. To give my people a choice. Some day, we may even be able to admit that openly. But for now, we speak of the Jedi only among the crew."

"Of course, My Lady."

After breakfast, they doused the campfire. Then they left their camp and animals behind, taking only what they needed for combat.

The border was a cold wash across Dije's Force senses.

The role of Dije's gang was to prevent the other gang from interfering in the duel between the Lord and Lady. They found cover and took up firing positions. And waited.

It was not long before the Lord came out to defend his territory. His men formed a semi-circle behind him. He stepped out and raised both hands, but did not call the lightning yet. He waited for his opponent to come to the traditional dueling range.

Dije walked forward, and raised her hands too. But instead of Force lightning, she called a black fog that coalesced into snakes.

The Lord went white and cast his lightning. Dije took the blast and her serpents struck him, their poisoned fangs sinking into his arms, his throat, his face. He fell to the ground in a fit. But he cast lightning back at Dije again.

Dije cast lightning at him now, finishing him off before the poison could claim him.

As one, the Lord's former gang sank to their knees before her. "The lost art of illusion," one whispered.

Another prostrated himself. "Spare us, Lady! We will serve the Lady of Illusion. I am Ziss Indarkos, and I pledge myself to you and to the power of fanged serpents."

"Rise, Ziss Indarkos," Dije said, using a courtly gesture that she had seen Leia use when addressing the Noghri. "I am Dije Kun, Dark Lady and Initiate of the Fallanassi. That power I will teach to any who will follow me."

Ziss stood up. "Then many will follow you, Lady."

Over the next few weeks, Dije moved into the old Lord's house, consolidated her position, met with the important people of the village, and integrated her gang with the existing local gang. It was not exactly a smooth transition of power; Ziss and some of the others clamored to become her students in the art of illusion, but naturally they resented Kerruke and her crew as the new insiders.

And there was the matter of the business operations. Dije simply took over the previous Lord's role as the recipient and redistributor of what amounted to a tax on local businesses.

But the former Lord of this territory had been involved in the slave trade. He had encouraged the commons of the village to sell off excess children, and he had redealt them to a quasi-official trading house run by Governtists in a nearby starport. He had even occasionally dealt in Sith children, which was highly illegal, and had gotten commoners to pretend to be their parents. Slaves with the Force were a bad idea all around, and the Governtists forbade it.

Dije put a stop to the slave trade, causing much grumbling among the former Lord's men, who now had to divide a smaller pie with a larger group. There was trouble brewing there, but Dije had a plan for it.

She encouraged the villagers, Sith and commons alike, to regard illusion as a kind of wealth, even opulence. And she began introducing a philosophy she had been working on for some time, as she had traveled with Kerruke's crew. It came out of her love for Fruitioner folk music, and her repulsion toward the useless Things she had tripped over on Star Morning. She called it kasenth: resource neutral entertainment. The word already existed, as an outgrowth of the folk dance kasenthios. When Fruitioners said kasenth, they meant things associated with folk music and dance, including certain types of food, clothing, and so forth, and a sense of comradery and fun; all the things one might encounter at a Festival, outside of the actual ceremony. But Dije extended it to include any live music, or any sort of entertainment one did not have to buy. She set a fashion in Fallanassi hair-braiding.

But that was only half of the plan.

It was Festival time in the Sacred Lands. Kerruke was braiding crystals and silver ribbons into Dije's hair. The twins played noisily outside, under a tree.

"Are you sure this is a good idea, Lady Dije?" Kerruke asked.

"I can pull this off, Kerruke."

"But why? I mean, what will you gain?" 

"I'm not sure yet. But I know this is something I need to do. I can feel it."

Kerruke finished the braid and started doing up the buttons on the back of the green dress. Her fingers brushed the small of Dije's back, and hesitated.

"Can you sense it, Kerruke? Life."

"I feel it. You used the Legacy Sample."

"Yes. We're going to be relatives. Your children and mine, half-siblings."

"Last night?"

"Yes."

"That would explain… I felt a strange tangle of emotions coming from your new house, My Lady."

"Yes. The Legacy Sample is a complicated matter. Especially for me. When I realized what the mechanics of using it would be, it was a difficult moment. But I want my child to be as strong as possible. I intend to raise her in the light. In the Jedi way. So, she won't have access to the quick and easy power. She'll need natural gifts to compensate."

Dije could not pass her own border without inviting an attack from a neighboring Lord, but she did not have to go out into the Sacred Lands to speak to the Fruitioners. Dije went up onto the roof of Kerruke's house, which was on the edge of the village near the forest, and had a view onto the farmland beyond.

It was evening, when the circle would be gathering for the dance and ritual. Dije cast an illusion of light, a soft glow like a moonpath on water. It was a road, leading from the ritual grounds to the village. She knew at least some of the Fruitioners would follow it. With her illusion set, Dije climbed down the ladder to wait.

She noticed Ni watching her descend as he held the ladder. "Hey Ni, you'd better not be looking up my skirt."

Ni looked away immediately, slightly pale. Fear radiated off of him in the Force.

Dije sighed. These men had not followed her here out of love, but out of respect for her fighting ability, and illusion, and—from the perspective of her own people—her downright evil ways against her enemies. No, Dije thought, they had not really followed her at all. Kerruke had followed her, and they had followed Kerruke.

Dije took a seat just inside her border, at the end of the glowing path, and dismissed her gang. She created some additional illusions: flowers growing under her feet, and behind her, a wavering vision of some bright landscape, with the village still visible through it. It was precisely the way an avatar of the Spring Goddess was supposed to appear, according to the songs and art.

I took about an hour before the first group of Festival-goers arrived: three men and two women in brown robes. When they saw Dije, one of the men sank down to the ground in awe. The others came forward a few steps.

Dije stood up and paced toward them. Flowers appeared at her feet as she walked.

"Plohe?" One of the women asked, naming her the Goddess of Spring.

"In her image do I walk," Dije responded, consciously using the archaic phrasings of song. "Blessings upon you." She raised her hands and let golden light fall on the five Fruitioners, twinkling like stars, floating like sparks from a fire.

"Goddess-channel," one of the men said. "We thank you for your blessings."

"Who are you?" asked the woman who had spoken before.

"I am Dije. I am Lady, and Master, and priestess of the Dream. I am a devotee of Fala."

One of the Fruitioners inhaled, half gasp and half meditative breath.

"This is an illusion, then?" asked one of the men.

Dije made a butterfly appear on her hand, its blue wings flashing like dichroic glass. The butterfly flew to the woman, who held out a hand and let the butterfly land on it.

"It's real. I can feel its little feet."

Dije smiled. "It is illusion, that is more than illusion. It is the gift of the Dreaming Goddess. To you she gave this gift long ago. You gave it to us, and we lost it. But I have found it again. And I give it back to you. I welcome all who wish to come to me. I will teach any who have the talent. On this spot I will make a shrine to Fala; let all who wish to honor her bring offerings."

"We will," promised the woman. "By dawn every Fruitioner in the Sacred Lands will know of this miracle." She backed away down the glowing path, and the other four went with her.

Dije maintained the path-light for another half an hour. She ordered the crew to bring out the stones they had prepared. With the Force, it did not take much effort to stack them into the shape of a covered open-air chapel with an altar inside. Dije asked Kerruke to assign the watch. All those, Sith and village commoner, who had learned illusion, had an assigned part of the day to maintain the illusion of a butterfly floating above the altar.

By morning the altar was covered with small trays of food and flowers, gold and silver jewelry, small whittled art objects, and folded paper covered with poetry. By evening the whole village square was filled with like offerings. The twins' contribution, an inside out cat, was quietly removed when they weren't looking.

At sunset the offerings disappeared. Those who were there made a huge collective oooh sound, even the ones who knew that Dije had simply turned them invisible.

One of the Fruitioners called out, "Fala has accepted the offerings!"

A great cheer went up, and there was music and dancing and strobe. The Fruitioners lit multicolored cold-lights and made their way back to their camp.

Then Dije made the offerings reappear, and declared, "Fala has taken the essence of the offering. These physical forms belong now to her illusionists. Eat! Wear gold! Make merry!"

From that day forward, there was no more grumbling about money in the village.

The engine room of Sith Raider swirled with blue and green lights. Fish drifted through the air, through the walls, through the engines, and through Ojaste and Dai-Oni. Ojaste's illusions were insubstantial, wavering and slow-moving. The engines seemed to turn into giant anemones, their transparent arms waving languidly in the faint current, reaching toward glittering fish.

One anemone-illusion seemed to swallow its caster as Ojaste sprawled across the engine housing. Despite the evidence of her eyes and mind, the cold metal was a solid support underneath her.

Waves lapped the ceiling in time to the rhythm of Dai-Oni's rancor-hide flogger. He left his mark on her back, buttocks, and legs, in the form of red welts. The underwater otherworld dissolved into confetti as the undine-illusionist's mind flowed from deep subspace to something beyond, some place where form had no meaning.

Playtime ended, and Ojaste passed from the Dream of Fala to the dream of flesh: true sleep. She woke up when she heard the ring of boots of the deck.

"I'm tired of you two goofing off everywhere I go." Lord Captain Arr's voice; he sounded angry. Well, Imei-Sim usually sounded angry, except after sacking another ship. "Go make yourself useful."

Dai-Oni started to help Ojaste up, but his brother ordered, "Leave her. I'll find some use for her."

Dai-Oni hesitated. Then he muttered something unintelligible and stalked off.

Ojaste levered herself up with a hand on the engine housing. The walls still flickered slightly bluish as her lingering subspace kept the doors of illusion open.

"Can't stand up, huh? That's OK. You don't need to stand up. Kneel. Kneel, I said!"

Ojaste slid to the deck and knelt before her Lord.

"Why should my brother get everything? He's not the Lord and Captain around here. Please me, kriffer."

"I'm your brother's girlfriend," Ojaste protested.

"That's an order!"

"Yes, My Lord," Ojaste whispered. She took in the serpent and wept.

Dai-Oni came back in. Perhaps he had planned to help Ojaste, but if so, he abandoned all such thoughts at the sight. "Hey!" Dai-Oni Force-shoved Ojaste away from Capt. Arr, and she crumpled to the floor crying and vomiting.

"You have something to say?" the Lord sneered.

"No," Dai-Oni grated. He stomped over to Ojaste, picked her up by the hair and dragged her out. He hauled her down the corridor and she scrabbled on the deck plates, naked and weeping.

He stopped beside a door. "You kriffing little cheat." He pressed buttons and opened the door.

"He's my Lord," Ojaste cried. "What was I supposed to do?"

Dai-Oni tossed her into the airlock. "See you how like being left out in the cold." He closed the door.

The outer lock started to cycle.

Ojaste tried to open the inner door with the Force, but Dai-Oni had thought of that, and was blocking her.

Her fear became a mist. Fog hung heavy where there was little real air left, as the airlock completed its pumping. She pounded on the door, and found the surface wet. "The fog," Ojaste whispered. "Illusion that is more than illusion."

In awe and dawning hope, Ojaste traced the outline of a door in the wall between the two airlock doors. She stepped through just as the outer door opened. Ojaste closed the door of illusion behind her.

She was in the hold. She curled up behind a cargo canister. The barrel was between her and the door, in case anyone came in. But with the concealing fog, Dai-Oni probably thought he had succeeded in spacing her. She could hide here, until the ship made planetfall or locked onto a station.

She wiped her eyes, and noted that her hands were shaking in reaction. But she no longer felt any fear. Wonder, even joy, welled up inside her. She was alive, and she was free, truly free; and she had mastered the art of illusion. No one and nothing could stop her now.

She made herself invisible and tentatively padded out into the hallway. No one was about. She made her way to the wardroom and went to the snack cooler. She turned up her nose at the beer; it would be a bad idea to take her edge off right now. She decided on juice, and some kind of mild bready thing.

Then the wardroom door opened, and she melted back behind the refrigeration unit, holding to invisibility.

It was Dai-Oni and Imei-Sim. "She was mine. Mine," Dai-Oni repeated. "You'll never have her now."

Lord Captain Arr replied, "She is nothing. Kill her if you wish. But we are brothers. I had hoped you would achieve breakthrough. Lady Dije showed us that two Lords can live and work together on the same ship."

"You were trying to enrage me? So I would ennoble myself?"

"Of course. Your continued development is my highest priority, dear brother."

Dai-Oni sighed. "It didn't work. But I understand now. I'm glad to stay, and to serve on your ship, my brother, my Captain, my Lord."

"I'll hire you another submissive, at our next port of call. And one for me."

"Good thinking. A pair of sisters, perhaps?"

"Sounds good."

Ojaste waited for them to leave, took her snacks and climbed up into the access tunnel. She stayed there until Sith Raider docked somewhere, and then she jumped ship.

Dije felt the intrusion in the middle of the night. A crackling Force-presence across her border, and a troop behind him: her neighboring Lord coming to challenge her.

Kerruke! Get the men up! To battle!

Dije threw on clothes, fastened her lightsaber to her belt and shuffled outside rubbing her eyes.

Her gang came pouring out of the houses in the lane, and formed up behind her. She changed her shuffle to a lordly stride. Dije summoned an illusion of herself, and sent it to take the first strike from her rival.

The other lord's lightning shredded the illusion on contact. Dije was not concerned. Her doppelganger had made the other lord expend energy without harming Dije, and had showed her his fighting style. Dije walked out to meet him.

"It was true what he said!" her enemy taunted. "Your illusions are just a trick. A holoprojection!"

For answer, Dije summoned the power of fanged serpents. A hydra-headed snake-beast struck at him, but he dispelled the illusion by casting lightning at it. Then Dije and her opponent cast lightning at each other, and for a long moment they stood motionless, sizzling light popping around them, raising smoke off of each other.

Then Dije felt the life within her shrieking in wordless panic. Dije reinforced her shields around her womb, but her enemy sensed her intent and shifted his attack. His lightning burned out the walls on which the umbilicus was attached, and they started to slough. Dije felt it go: a sharp and terrible pain. She cried out, and the small mass of cells that would have been her baby cried out to her for protection, and then, as its soul rose up in death, for revenge.

Dije screamed again, and her pain and grief transmuted to rage. She was the very fury of every mother animal, and her cry shook the foundations of buildings in front of her, and they collapsed, stone pulling apart from stone in with a roar and a great cloud of dust. A whole block of the enemy's section of village fell in, crushing the villagers in their beds.

The power of the Dark Side flowed through her, filling the sudden emptiness within. Dije reached out with the Force and grabbed rubble, and sent a hail of plastered granite at her enemy.

The lord turned them aside with a casual gesture and renewed his lightning attack.

With a shock, Dije realized that even in the depths of the purest and darkest hate she had ever felt, her enemy was stronger in the Force than she was. She abandoned the Force and reached for the White Current. Responding to her emotions, the White Current pounded down like a waterfall. Dije created an illusion that was more than illusion: a dagger at his back, with as much physical reality as butterfly feet. She stabbed him, and he made an odd little gasp. Pink froth appeared on his lips, and he fell.

But he was not quite dead yet. He raised his hands from the ground, trying to summon the noble gift.

Dije staggered forward, bent over, left hand to her middle, leaving a trail of blood. She reached the lord just as he managed to summon a last feeble spark and send it at Dije.

She let it pass through her, just one more meaningless pain in the swirl. She did not need to draw a weapon to finish him off, and she was glad; she wanted to save the surprise of the lightsaber for some time when she might really need it. Her illusion-dagger was still stuck in her enemy's back. Dije kicked his arm out of the way and stomped on his chest, burying the knife in his heart.

The light went out of his eyes, and his soul coalesced around him like ground fog. He nosed over the dagger, but it was not solidly real enough to serve as his long home. Instead he drifted toward one of his followers and encapsulated himself in a jeweled pendant hanging from a former pirate's neck.

The rival lord's gang bowed silently, but in a tentative way. They were obviously not sure Dije was going to survive.

"Kerruke! I'm miscarrying. I'm miscarrying the Legacy Child!"

Kerruke rushed out to her and helped her stand upright. Kerruke called to her former crewmen, "Get a transport!" Then, to the bowing defeated gang, "A vurgh! Is there a vurgh in this territory?" Dije's own territory had none.

"Yes," one of the men responded, perhaps deciding to ingratiate himself with his new ruler. "This way."

Kerruke hoisted Dije up with the Force and followed. Dije's gang came with her, except for Rejak, who had already dashed for the village groundcar. Soon he drove up in it and they loaded Dije aboard.

She moaned softly, closed her eyes and used a Jedi pain control technique. Soon the groundcar stopped and Kerruke got an arm under her shoulder and helped her wobble toward the vurgh's home and office.

He was waiting for them inside, grinning evilly. "At last. I knew you would come. That fool lord has served his purpose, and brought you to me."

Dije and Kerruke both stood still in shock.

"Now vengeance will be mine," said the vurgh, reaching for Dije with the Force, preparing to do something with his gift that was anything but healing.

Dije croaked, "Dokhon Jux!"

"Yes. Your arch enemy. And here you come to me, half alive. Ah, I see the Jedi demon seed is gone already. Too bad. I wanted the pleasure of killing your monster myself."

Jux paced forward, gathering power. Dije felt like she was coming apart, and she knew she probably was; he was doing something to her at the molecular level.

Kerruke started to pump herself up in the Force, preparing to strike at Jux, but Dije linked to her and directed, No. Wait. Let him come closer.

Jux reached for Dije's body with both hands, as a sculptor reaches for clay.

Suddenly he had no hands.

The sudden red light and the hiss registered simultaneously with the falling hands. Jux yelled and gestured with his stumps at Dije's midsection. Then she swung the lightsaber up and across and cut off his head.

The instantly cauterized neck did not spurt blood. The head and body fell severally to the floor with a thump and a crash.

Dije closed down the lightsaber and fainted. She came to briefly in the sputtering groundcar, long enough to tell Kerruke she was going into a healing trance.

When she woke up, she found that someone had cleaned her up and gotten her into a nightdress. There was a bottle of water, with the Fruitioner flower seal on it, within reach on the nightstand.

Dije blinked. Someone had replaced her plain nightstand with an elaborately carved wooden table. Some villager had made and given her a gift, without even waiting for her to wake up to receive it, so that she could be grateful and bestow favors. It was the last thing she expected.

In her first grief she had pulled down a whole row of houses, killing the innocents inside, and then she had capped her achievement by beheading the town's only doctor. And someone here—someone besides Kerruke and her crew—cared about her. Dije started to cry.

Once she started she couldn't stop. She cried for herself, for her lost daughter, for the unnamed lives ended, even for the lord who invaded her territory, because he had been duped by Dokhon Jux.

She cried until she couldn't breathe, and then fell into a troubled sleep.

Ojaste hesitated outside the opulent ironwork gate. This was the address, alright. What would Rene be doing living here? Perhaps she had found a place as a maid.

Ojaste stepped up to the intercom and allowed the mini holocam to scan her face. She told the droid, "I'm looking for Rene?"

The gates swung open, and Ojaste walked across manicured lawns and through an intricate knot garden. The carved alabaster front door opened as Ojaste mounted the marble steps, and Rene ran out in a swirl of blue silk.

"Ojaste! Ojaste!" Rene embraced her, squealing in delight. "Come in, come in! I'll have your things brought in, did you park your landspeeder on the street?"

"I have no things," Ojaste said. "I was lucky to escape with my life."

"I see there's some story here," Rene said gravely. "You can tell me all about it inside." She turned and snapped her fingers at a manservant. "Have tea brought to the second parlor." Diamonds flashed on Rene's neck as she moved in the sunlight.

Rene led Ojaste through the museum-like house and the two women settled on brocaded chairs in a cozy sitting room.

"How did you end up here?" Ojaste asked.

"The Worzes adopted me. It was like a fairy tale! At first."

A uniformed human maid brought tea and little jewel like snacks with a silver tea service, poured for the ladies, and then left them to their conversation.

"At first?" prompted Ojaste.

"Turns out, Mr. Worze was a fan. A fan of my acting."

"Oh."

"It wasn't so bad. At least I wasn't a slave anymore. But Mrs. Worze had not known, and when she caught us she hit him over the head with a vaz. Crystal, a delicate thing, it shouldn't have been fatal. But it was, and there was a dreadful investigation, and they said she would have to testify to what he was doing when she killed him or she'd go to prison, and she ran her flyer into a building. So I'm an orphan now." Rene made a circular gesture, taking in everything around her. "This is mine, now. And all the locals either want a piece of me or think I must have arranged it all somehow, being a low class whore."

"Oh, Rene, how terrible!"

Rene sighed. "It could be worse. If you have to be miserable, at least you can be miserable and rich."

Ojaste quirked an ironic smile. "There is that."

"Oh, Ojaste, you have no idea how nice it is to be able to talk frankly with someone! Do stay, at least for a while." 

"Thank you. I will. I have nowhere else to go, actually, except maybe out on another job, but I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet."

"So what's your tale?"

Ojaste related her break with the pirates, not bothering to censor the story to remove the pornographic bits, considering they were unlikely to shock Rene.

Rene gave a whole floor of her mansion over to Ojaste's use, and the two women went through Rene's closets and produced a suitable wardrobe for Ojaste. They spent a few days relaxing and chatting and catching up, and then the conversation turned to their mutual acquaintance Lady Dije. They decided to call her on the holocom.

It turned out the Lady's village did not have a holocom receiver, so they had to settle for a voice only transmission. So they did not see Dije looking pasty and ill.

Rene told her tale of woes and riches, and Dije contributed her share to the gossip fest, and finally Ojaste related her story again.

"He was my Lord. What was I supposed to do?"

Dije reassured her, "There was nothing else you could have done. If you wish, serve me now."

"I wish. Yes. Yes, My Lady."

"Good. I have a feeling I'm going to have something for you to do, out there in the wide galaxy. I'm not sure what yet. I don't really have visions, just Force-promptings. I always know what the right action is, I just never know why."

Since Dije had no rival neighbors now, and ruled a village surrounded by Fruitioner farmland on one side and an uninhabited mountain on the other, it was a surprisingly easy matter to smuggle her out. Members of her gang who knew the art of illusion undertook to maintain a cord of cold all around her border, as if she were still inside it.

Dije disguised her face with illusion, and wore a robe left as an offering at Fala's Shrine. The Governtist scientist who met with her did not have even a tidbit of the vurgh's gift, but he had always wanted to. That was why he had studied scientific medicine.

But his interests went beyond science, and when he heard of the Lady of Illusion from a Fruitioner patient, he was intrigued. He had contacted her, just at the right time. He could not go to a Sith-ruled village, since he was a Governtist. Someone from the government might be watching, and would call his loyalty into question. But one of Dije's Fruitioner students in the art of illusion came to him, to instruct him. Now she had come to him, for his help.

"Well?" Dije asked.

"I'm afraid you were right. There is no way to restore your fertility. But we have the facilities here to combine your somatic cells with the Legacy Sample, and grow a child for you in a gestational replicator. It's much safer and more controlled than a natural pregnancy, and most Governtist women use the replicator."

Dije nodded. "I was afraid of that."

"These gene scans you have of yourself and your donor are very complete, and very helpful with the most desirable traits flagged. A most ingenious computer program. With the technology here, I can go further than selecting the best chromosome pairs. If you like, I can purify and enhance the desired traits."

"Oh? How?"

"For example, I see from these gene patterns that the male donor had one parent with an incredibly strong Force talent, and one parent with no talent at all. I could remove the influence of the mindblind parent, and cause your child's midichlorian count to resemble his strong grandparent."

Dije inhaled a calming breath. Was it possible? Not just get Luke's strength—get the Chosen One's?

"How close to the grandparent can you make the child?"

"As close as you wish. A near clone is possible. I presume you will want to include some of your own genetic structure?"

"Yes, of course. Some. Let's look at the program and I'll show you what I want."

The ship thrummed around Talon Karrde. Mara was back, and everything seemed perfect. Until the red haired woman handed him an ornate Coruscanti event card.

"A wedding invitation? Mara and Luke? Do Jedi get married?"

"Whatever Luke says Jedi can do, we can do."

"We?!"

"Yes, we. I'm sorry, Karrde. I know you were hoping to make me your successor. But I'm only back long enough to finish up my projects and hand off my knowledge. It's been great working for you. Except for your pet vornskrs."

Vornskrs hunted using the Force. They were the predators that ysalamiri evolved their Force-null bubbles to defend against.

Karrde shook his head. "They've been getting touchier around you all the time. I knew that meant you were getting stronger in the Force. Somehow I just thought you'd never take the final step."

"Neither did I."

Dije began to recruit Fruitioners to learn Illusion, and Brights to join the Bright Squad, which were—secretly-- Jedi. She taught these things to many Sith, and even some Governtists. Some of the common people learned Illusion, too. She developed a reputation as a wise and generous teacher, respected by all parties. Other Lords began to form alliances and even friendships with her.

Those who did not respect her as a teacher, respected her as a warrior. The tale of how she destroyed the rival city was well known, and had grown in the telling. When Sith from far away spoke of her, they said, "her wrath is terrible". Sith had met her, and who did not understand her Jedi ways, feared her as unpredictable, because she could use the Force when she's calm. Sith depended on sensing their enemies' anger to warn them of an impending strike.

All that was well and good, and in accordance with the Force-promptings she received. But it drove her to distraction not to know why she was doing all these things. That was why, when she received a communiqué from Luke about how to get better Force-Visions by using less power, Dije was more than ready to try it.

Dije shared the source of her new direction only with Kerruke. "The last line was 'I wish I could share with you the life events that brought me to this conclusion, but those details would identify me, if anyone intercepted and decoded this.' I've read it over and over so many times I have it memorized. I wish I could know the history behind this discovery, too. When I knew him, Luke was the most power hungry person I've ever met, in his own backwards way. He wouldn't have accepted a crown if it was shoved onto his head, but he had a driving need to be stronger in the Force all the time, no matter how strong he got. I wish I could know what changed."

Dije shifted uncomfortably on the overstuffed divan. She was long past the first few weeks of pain and weeping after losing her daughter, but her body never seemed quite right afterwards. "Well. I know what's changed for me, that I can do this. I'm as secure in my Territory as any Lord has ever been. My borders don't touch any other Lord's domain. The caves are coming along as a fortress."

"Are you sure you won't change the front entrance, Lady Dije?" Kerruke asked. "The bugs crawling on a hill of rockbat dung are rather disturbing to some people."

Dije smiled crookedly. "The front is supposed to look like a natural cave. Which it is. Leaving the native ecology intact is good camouflage. And besides, it contributes to my reputation among the Fruitioners."

"As a dung- cave dwelling madwoman?" Kerruke asked.

Dije laughed. "As an avatar of their gods. As you well know."

"So what's the plan?"

"Use only the minimal amount of Force needed to accomplish my goals. I'll use illusion when I need something showy."

"And that's all it takes? I don't know. It seems like if just not using much power were all it took to get good Force-Visions, then the least powerful should have them."

"No. It's only when someone very, very powerful suddenly becomes still and listens, that the visions come. Not using much power is different from not having much."

"Ah. That makes sense." Kerruke looked over her shoulder to make sure only the crew and the Bright Squads were in earshot. "A Jedi Knight rights wrongs and fights evildoers, a Jedi Master lives in a cave and has visions?"

Dije snorted. "Something like that."

The bride and groom both wore white and red, according to Coruscanti custom. Mara had the traditional Coruscanti wedding bow in her hair, and wore a long over-vest in a shade of red calculated to play up her naturally red hair. The wedding couple looked like they could have walked out of the most extravagant period of the high court of Palpatine. Except that both bride and groom were wearing lightsabers.

The ceremony was as lavish and complicated as any High Alderaanian affair, and even Leia had to be careful, although her part as the representative of the groom's family was short.

The role of Mara's family representative was played by the smuggler chief Karrde, which made everyone slightly uncomfortable, Karrde not least. The reason for Mara's lack of a family was never spoken, but the Imperial era pomp and style, and the setting—Mara had wanted to hold it in the throne room in the Imperial Palace, and Luke, wisely, had not said a word—strongly recalled just why a Jedi might have no living relatives.

After the ceremony proper was the feast, which the couple escaped after what seemed to Luke like an endless round of confusing dances, even more confusing toasts, and far too long spent in the less than practical suit.

When they reached their suite of rooms on an upper level of the palace, Luke couldn't wait to get out of the sugar plum fairy outfit, and not only because it was uncomfortable. He couldn't wait to get Mara out of her matching gown, too.

Finally the door was locked and the outer layer of clothing shed—he didn't want to wait for all the layers-- and he swept Mara up and then, more promisingly, down.

Flat on her back, his face an inch above hers-- Luke just stopped. He couldn't go on. He couldn't get past it.

The pause went on. Mara went still beneath him, her own mood disrupted by his. She reached out to him in the Force.

Open up to me, Luke.

Isn't that my line?

What's bothering you?

A series of embarrassed half words formed in Luke's mind. Luke and Mara were in mind-link, but it was the kind of link used for communication, which Luke had learned from Dije and which Mara had learned from Palpatine. It was not a deep sharing of souls, and neither Luke nor Mara wanted it to be. They were both perfectly happy with the Sith version of telepathy.

Mara thought to him, Uh, Luke, you have done this before, right?

Not since-- Luke stopped whatever thought he was about to have. Whatever it was, it was accompanied by a vague picture of a dark liquid falling into a sink, the kind a spaceship would have. Mara did not know what it meant.

Mara got the impression he was trying not to spoil the mood rather than seriously trying to hide something from her. Mara didn't push, and was rewarded with one of Luke's shy farmboy smiles. One of the things I love about you, Mara, is how we can both give each other mental space even when we're in link.

That's more important for me than you, I think.

You have your secrets and I have mine. Let's try...

Mara got a clear mental image from Luke, and obliged him by rolling until she was on top. She dismissed all thoughts of secrets and of the past. Comfy?

Much nicer.

Mara saw that Luke's awkwardness had vanished. And she had a hunch it was more than just a favorite position. It was an attitude. Mara grabbed his hands, smiled evilly and tore open his fancy wedding suit with the Force. Even better?

Definitely.

She did not mean her realization to carry over into speech, but in the mind-link, to think was to say. You need me to be the aggressor.

Well…

Let's not get picky about the vocabulary, Luke.

OK.

Mara reached up and pulled the Coruscanti wedding bow from her hair, undid the ribbon, and introduced Luke to a clamp-knot. She was careful to cross his wrists right over left, so his artificial hand would take the bite of the ribbon. The clamp-knot wasn't very sturdy looking done in white shimmersilk ribbon instead of shock-cord, but it would do.

Mara spoke aloud, "I have you now, Skywalker."

Luke grinned. "Yes, you do, Mrs. Skywalker."

Ongreya traveled through Chiss space to the Empire of the Hand. She set Old Pointy down in the yard of a large building with a fence around it, isolated from the nearest city by hundreds of kilometers of impassable desert. She assumed human form and started up the Psy Healer subcast.

Uniformed security men tried to stop her. But they were used to bullying the helpless, and had only injectors full of drugs for weapons. Ongreya was a Jedi. She did not even have to fight them, only ignite her sea-green lightsaber, and they fell back before her. She herded them into one of the many cells and locked them in.

She found the man in his cell, strapped down to his bed and left in his own waste until his skin festered. His eyes rolled whitely.

Ongreya shut off the lightsaber and approached the bed.

"Don't be afraid. I'm Ongreya the Psy Healer. Your pain called out to me across the stars. I can help you."

"That's what they all say," replied the man.

"Perhaps. But I'm different. I'm like you."

"I see through you, Changeling."

"Yes. But what are you, really?"

"The spawn of hell."

Ongreya made a clucking sound. "You're only repeating what you were taught, but it's things like that, that make them keep you here." She unfastened his restraints, put an arm under his shoulders, and helped him sit up.

"But they were right. Things happen around me. Or, they did. Before the drugs. The drugs keep it under control."

She helped him stand up, and then supported him as she walked him down the hallway toward the bathroom. "If you're so broken, why do they keep you like that?"

"They keep everybody like that."

"What sorts of things happen around you?"

"Things move. Change. When I dream, it happens. They thought I did it on purpose, but I didn't! I never wanted to turn things over and play stupid pranks. I was so afraid!"

"Yes, tell me about that," Ongreya encouraged, exerting a touch of her power.

"Afraid all the time. To be found out. Then I was. Isolated. Quarantine. Then Three. Three! Three!"

The man shrieked and pushed away from her, but Ongreya caught him with the Force before he could fall down. "Come on. Let's get you cleaned up."

The man sobbed, bent over with his hands over his face, but he allowed her to guide him to the bathroom. She helped him step into the water shower and adjusted the spray for him. Once he was inside, he automatically turned his filthy back to the water and let it clean him, although he winced and hissed as the spray touched bedsores.

Ongreya searched a bit and found a blanket to wrap him up in after he dried off. "How old were you when you were shunned?"

"Don't know. Long time. Long time ago."

"What is Three?"

He screamed and started beating his fists against the wall.

Ongreya made no attempt to stop him. Instead, she entered a meditative state, and reached out to the Force. She used a Jedi technique to purge the psychoactive drugs from his system.

Gradually, he ran down. Then he slid to the floor, sitting with his shoulder propped against the wall. "I can feel you," he whispered. "Everything turned real again. You got rid of the drugs somehow."

"Yes. So you see, I am like you. A Jedi."

"Demon," he said, but oddly without emotion.

"Tell me: why would you believe those who would lock up a child for having a talent? Why do you continue to believe in their views of our kind? Surely you can see they are not the good guys."

"Everybody else believed them. They went off to their new world, to form a Colony, and I was locked up here."

"Yes. But because you are insane, not because you have the potential to learn to use the Force."

"Am I nuts?"

"Yes. You are. That's not your fault. You were kept away from all companionship from a young age. The last thing you need is more isolation, in your cell. I can't provide the experience of socialization that you need to make your way in the galaxy. But I can heal your mind of its hurts. All you have to do is drop your shields and let me in."

"How do I do that?"

Ongreya gave her standard speech, and began his healing.

After a few minutes, he sighed and said, "I do feel a little better, I think. But I don't feel like a new me."

"You have a longstanding and complicated problem. It may take days, or even weeks, to heal you fully."

"They'll never let you stay here that long. I know you don't belong here. You came through the door with your lightsaber lit. You broke in here."

"Yes. But I can break back out, too. Normally I don't take passengers in my ship, because there is only one acceleration couch. But I established that rule back before I became a Jedi. Now, I can fly and use the Force to keep you floating inside the ship at the same time. Now, I can take a human passenger, because I can keep the g forces from crushing you by using the Force to counteract them."

"Then what are we waiting for?"

Ongreya took him to another planet, where no one would be looking for him, and healed him. He came to see that the Jedi were not the evil he had been taught to fear after all, and decided to pursue his gift. Ongreya sent him off on a passenger liner bound for Coruscant. From there the Jedi Academy supply shuttle would take him the rest of the way.

Then Ongreya went to the Colony to check on the Colonists.

She landed Old Pointy at Jinzler's Repair Yard. By the time she exited her ship, a human man was waiting for her.

"Yes ma'am! How can I serve you today?"

"Just refueling," Ongreya said.

His face fell; ships only stopped there every 2 or 3 years for emergency repairs.

"Well, you can do a standard maintenance check, too, if you know about this type of vessel."

"Sure! I'll look up the specs. Is there anything else I can get for you? If you didn't land for repairs, then maybe you might be interested in the local wood crafts?" He eyed the ship dubiously, all too aware it was no cargo vessel.

"I am here about Three."

"Oh. Oh!" His expression went from eager to serve to some other eagerness, some terrible need. "How did you find out about that? The committee doesn't allow any transmissions. And most of the ships that land here aren't interested in our local problems."

"I spoke to a survivor."

"The isolated one? So he speaks now?"

"He's fine now. Well, sane, anyway. I am a Psy Healer. I healed him."

The engineer stuck out his hand. "Thank you. Dean Jinzler, at your service."

"Ongreya."

When she shook his hand, her robe flapped open, and his eyes glinted when they saw the lightsaber at her belt. "That's not all you are. It's about time. I thought Luke and Mara had forgotten us. Come with me."

Dean took her to the Wire to show her Quarantine. The Wire was a fence around a shed. "Seven children live in there. They used to have caretakers from the Colony, until the older ones kicked them out."

"What is Three? I could never get my patient to tell me exactly what it was."

"D-3. A ship. One of several ships attached to a central storage core. Most of the attached ships weren't inhabited after the crash. Uliar and the other elders have something or other against the Jedi, I'm still not sure what exactly. Jealousy, perhaps. Or maybe it's just fear of losing their political power, since if anyone here managed to grow up into a real Jedi the elders would surely not be able to rule with an iron fist anymore. Anyone they suspected of having Force talent, they sent them to Quarantine. When they were really sure, which only happened once, they sent the poor kid over to D-3 to live all by himself on a wrecked starship half buried underground.

Ongreya tried to get the children to come out of the shed to talk to her, but they would not come out. She and Dean went back to his shipyard, and found Rosemari hanging around. Ongreya subcast this confrontation between Dean and Rosemari:

"If only you'd had the guts to stand up for Evlyn I would have married you. We could have had a good life together. Any time up until Uliar had the new Quarantine Camp put up, we could all have just left. I could've gotten a berth on some space line as ship's engineer, and I'm sure you could have learned some useful skill too."

"I have a useful skill. I'm a teacher."

"Who would trust you with their kid? Besides the idiot Colonists."

"I'm a good teacher!"

"You're a terrible mother!"

"You did this, Dean! I was keeping Evlyn safe. Nobody knew what she was. You outed her!"

"She wouldn't have to hide anyplace but here!"

Ongreya did not exert her power. This was not a rift she was called to heal. This was going out on the Jedi subcast.

She contacted Luke, and Luke said he had the perfect solution.

Luke copied the subcast and sent it to Dije.

Dije asked Luke: "Why didn't you rescue them?'

"Jedi don't steal children from their parents."

"Sith do."

Dije contacted Ojaste at Rene's mansion.

Dije to ordered, "I want you to rescue the children, and any of the other Threes who want to come with you. Make an example of the Colonists. But leave some alive. To testify. Ages from now, I want men to fear the Sith will steal their children. Steal them, and take them to a land of magic and power and illusion, never to return. When all the planets of this galaxy have crumbled to dust, and humanity has moved on to a new galaxy, and all lands and tongues have changed, we will remain branded in the psyches of mankind as a fearful myth. I foresee it, in the Force. They will fear even to name us, and will call us the Good Folk, hoping not to anger us. They will know us for Powers beyond their imagining, the Sith who steal children. No mere mortal can tell whether the Sith he meets on the road belongs to the Bright Court or the Dark. All will fear our power; all will fear the coming of the She."

"It will be as you order, My Lady."

Ojaste told Rene, A little girl needs me. Her name is Evlyn. She's been kept in a shed behind barbed wire since she was eight, because she's different. I must save her."

Hugging Ojaste, Rene said, "You can use my yacht. You're my only real friend, Ojaste. Everyone else I know only loves me for my money. But I would never stand in the way of your work, of rescuing other children who need you as I did."

Ojaste went to the Colony. She arranged for all the Colonists and Threes to come together for her judgment.

Rosemari pleaded with the Council, "We could use more hands, why can't we let the Threes out to help with the harvest?"

Threes leader derided, "Why should we help you? I hope you all starve."

Dean asked, "Where's Evlyn?"

Threes leader replied, "She can't walk. You know she has the Nerve Wasting."

Ojaste objected, "That's curable."

Threes leader explained, "Why would they waste their precious resources on medicine for us? We're only threes."

Uliar spat, "You know it's not like that. That boy has healing powers, why doesn't he cure her?"

Threes leader snarled, "Because thanks to you he hates his own power too much to use it. Just like Evlyn does, and half the children in there. The other half fear it too much to use it. That's what you've been trying to do all along. Stunt our growth, twist our powers against ourselves. But some of us grew up in the meantime. Now we know our enemy, and it isn't our power. It's you. I hate you!"

The Threes leader lifted his hand and Uliar's hair caught on fire. Uliar jumped up and grabbed someone's cloak and patted the fire out. "I knew it! You Jedi are pure evil!" He turned to Ojaste. "You can't deny it now! There's your proof for you damned judgment! Judge yourselves, high and mighty Jedi!"

"You miscalculate. I'm not a Jedi. I am a Sith. Unlike our ancient enemies the Jedi, we really are evil."

Ojaste summoned the power of fanged serpents. Black coils of darkness formed around her arms, and she released them, a hydra of a hundred heads, striking all the adult Colonists, except Rosemari and Dean. The Colonists fell and writhed, slowly dying of the poison. Then they were still.

Some of the children screamed and wailed by their dead parents, until Ojaste slapped them and told them to shut up. "You're better off without them, you fools. They'd be sending you behind the Wire next. Most of the people in Three have no Force abilities at all. They're just kids who guessed what their parents were thinking once too often, because they knew them. And said it in public, where Uliar's spies could hear. Or who won too much at card games, because they were good at them. Or jumped too high, because they were athletic. Is that the kind of life you want? Leaving in fear of luck and talent?"

Ojaste turned to Dean. "Come with us. Rene's yacht could use a ship's engineer."

"If you're taking Evlyn with you, I'll come gladly."

"Yes, yes!" Rosemari cried. "Evlyn! I can see my Evlyn again at last!" She started to run toward the Quarantine Camp.

But Ojaste reached out with the Force and tripped her. "No. You're staying here. All alone. In the isolation of Three. As you condemned your daughter to live."

"No! Please! I didn't do that, it was Uliar!"

"Uliar was one man. Old and frail, and entirely without the Force. He was no Emperor Palpatine, who could crush his enemies with a thought. The rest of you could have resisted him."

Rosemari burst into tears. "I love Evlyn! Please, let me go to her!"

"Never. I'm here to steal her, you see. Tell them, the Sith stole your children. Seek for her in vain. I'm taking her to a place of magic and illusion, from which no one ever returns."

The Threes kept some of their relatives with them, when they went with Rene's yacht back to Corporate space to start their new lives. Some of the potential Jedi children chose to travel to the Academy, and the rest of the children were taken in by a military school for future stormtroopers in the Empire of the Hand.

Ojaste and Dean took Evlyn to a civilized world to be cured of the nerve wasting. The disease was halted and eliminated, but the damage it had already done could not be repaired. Except by a vurgh. They took her to Kamex, to a highly reputed Sith healer, and Evlyn could walk again.

Ojaste, Evlyn, Dean Jizzler, and some of the younger Force-sensitive children arrived in Dije's Territory. Dije assigned the younger children to various adoptive families. She and Ojaste undertook Evlyn's training themselves. Based on Luke's description of the sweet little girl he had met before she was sent to the Quarantine Camp, Dije had expected her to follow the Jedi way and join the Bright Squad. But this older, bitter Evlyn was a Sith to her core.

One day, when Evlyn was watching the other Threes children under the tree, playing with Kerruke's twins, Piekke caught a bird with the Force and snapped off its beak, and poked out its eyes with it. The other children screamed at her one of them went running to Evlyn to put a stop to it. But Evlyn responded as a Sith mother would. She slapped the crying child's face and said, "Don't come running to me about your playmate! If you don't like what she's doing, fight her yourself!"

The child only cried harder, and Evlyn roared in frustration at the annoying sound, reaching out with the Force and floating up into the tree branches, to grab a branch and hang on or fall. The child clung to the branch, wailing even louder.

Dije felt Evlyn's anger rise in the Force. Her power reached a pitch she had never before achieved.

Dije said to Evlyn, "You are strong in the Dark Side. You have a deep wellspring of hate."

"My enemy Uliar is dead," Evlyn snapped. "Ojaste killed him. I still hate him, but… it's not the same."

"Your enemy Rosemari is not."

"She's my mother."

"So her betrayal of you is all the more shocking and horrific."

"Yes," Evlyn whispered. Then: "YES!!" She flattened the building behind her, and knocked down some of the people standing nearest to her.

"You are powerful, Evlyn!" Dije called, over the noise of the whirlwind Evlyn's terrible hate was stirring. "This is your moment! Do you want your tattoo now?"

"Yes! Yes! Test me! I am ready!"

"Then fly! Fly on your dust devil!"

The winds whipped around Evlyn, and she lifted from the ground.

"Good, good! Now reach out to your enemy! Where is she now?"

"My enemy is in despair, weeping in self-pity for being all alone! How pathetic she is!"

"Good, Evlyn! Good! Now. The Force is Life. The Force is Life, Evlyn. Live!"

Dije stretched out both hands and caught Evlyn in a torrent of Force lightning. Evlyn fell to the ground, screaming.

The other children drew back in fear. Ojaste hushed them. "It's all right. Sh, sh."

Then Evlyn was still. Dije knelt beside her and smiled. "She lives. Bring the tattooist. And alert the caterer. And the musicians. There will be a party tonight." Performing an initiation got easier every time.

Dean Jinzler went to Kamex Spaceport and got a job as a hyperdrive repairman. Evlyn could not live with him, since Sith were only allowed to live in a Sithtown, or workers' barracks, but she visited often. At first she lived in a workers' barracks by the yards, working as a dockworker—Dije's old job, in fact—but then she moved into an apartment with three other Sith in a nearby Sithtown, and moved up to being a courier for the Kolvetten gang. Kolvetten still held the Territory closest to the spaceport.

Dije wrote to Luke, sending via hypercom in text only, so no voices or faces would be given away, "The most important thing I learned from you was how to let go. To let a student find her own path."

"I don't understand. I thought you wanted to name him Ben to honor your old friend and teacher."

"I do."

"So how is that a way to make peace with the past?"

"Ben Kenobi was really not a nice person. He was a manipulative liar, and I don't think he ever meant me to grow up at all."

"You mean he tried to hold you back?"

"I mean he set me up. Think about it. He brought me to Tatooine in the middle of the Jedi Purges. When Vader was tracking down every last Jedi and killing them. If Vader never found me he must not have been looking very hard. Ben lived on Tatooine under his own real name of Kenobi, and left me my own real name of Skywalker, living with my own real relatives, in a home my father had been in. I would have been easy to find. I was bait. If Vader ever went looking for Skywalker's child, I was right there to be found. Leia was hidden away and protected. Obi-Wan never meant me to survive to adulthood."

Dije's child was born about a year or two after Luke and Mara's. It took many years for the scientist to perfect the genetic engineering, since it was a secret project that he could only work on when his colleagues were gone from the lab. He told Dije he feared if any of the other Governtists found out about the Legacy Sample, they would want to nationalize it for government use. He painted a word-picture of an invincible clone army of super-soldiers. Dije agreed. So the project took a very long time.

No matter how much time and effort had gone into his creation, however, the little bugger was still exasperating when he threw a tantrum. And Dije had only herself to blame that he was kriffing strong.

It took a dozen of her men to suppress him when he tried to pull the house down around her, and even in the suppression field, he still managed to knock things over and break them.

"What have I done, Kerruke?" Dije asked. "He's bad seed. I should have seen it!"

"He's two, Dije. All two year olds act like that. Even the Force-blind. Don't worry so much."

Mara discovered a transmission to Sith-ta from the Jedi Academy on Yavin 4.

She deciphered the word "battle meld". Evidently the code had no word for it, so it had to be encrypted with a cipher, which is much easier to break than the code.

Mara realized it might be a book-code and began comparing texts from the library. She discovered it was a book-code keyed to Dije's translation of the Exar Kun material. She realized this translation only existed in two places: the Jedi Academy library and Dije Kun's personal effects. So she reasoned that the recipient must be Dije Kun. Whom Mara, along with everyone else but Luke, believed to have turned to the Dark Side. She thought she was onto a spy or even a traitor.

She translated the transmission and saw that it was indeed instructions on how to achieve the Jedi battle meld, which was a way to mind-link a whole squadron together to act as one. There was also a personal note at the end: "This battle meld is a variation on the mind link technique you taught me. It seems like ages ago. I'm glad to hear your recruitment efforts are going well. Mine are too."

But who was the traitor? Who was the Dark Lady communicating with?

"When you don't know who to trust," Mara reminded herself, "go straight to the top." Fortunately, the top was only as far away as her own quarters. Not that Luke was a top.

Luke read it over carefully, only the hard set to his jaw showing a hint of emotion beneath his glacial calm. "Thank you for bringing this to me. I'll handle it from here. Don't speak to anyone else about this."

"I understand. It's important the spy not know we're onto him before we make our move. So what are we going to do?"

"I'll handle it," Luke repeated. His mind was locked tight behind his shields.

Mara could not sense his thoughts, but she guessed, "You know who it is."

"There won't be any more transmissions from here," Luke said carefully.

Mara thought she understood. She had heard that Dije had been friends with Anakin while they were at the Academy together. Luke must be keeping this hushed up to protect his nephew. Luke, of course, would naturally believe he could talk anybody around eventually, especially his own relatives. And so far he had always been right.

"Alright," Mara said, nodding. "Of course, my natural reaction is to find the spy and nail him to the wall. And yours is to save him. But if you can't, then I want in on what comes next."

"Of course. Thank you, Mara."

When she had left, Luke erased the datapad. He thought, I've been lax. I need a secure comm drop.

Luke didn't know as much about covert operations as Mara did, but he knew enough. He had extensively researched the history of the Jedi Purges, hoping to find more descendants of Jedi for his Academy. He had learned how some of the Jedi of the Old Order had tried to hide, and exactly what mistakes had eventually uncovered them.

From now on he was not going to send or receive transmissions from Dije at the Academy. It was time he and Artoo went flying in the X-wing, alone. Luke would pick some nearby planet to set up the comm drop.

He had known from the beginning that these communications could be dangerous for Dije, and embarrassing for him; even potentially dangerous for him, in the wrong context. That was why they used the book code, and used text only transmissions so neither their faces nor their voices were part of the message, and did not share any personal details that could identify either one of them. He told her about the latest Jedi techniques such as the battle meld, but did not share the news of his marriage or the birth of his child.

Dije shared her discoveries with him, too. In her latest message she had said she had evidence that breakthrough can only be achieved through the dark side. She had enough students of both the Jedi and the Sith ways that she had seen many with the noble talent. The very first time someone calls the lightning, it can only be done with anger. She said she supposed that was the reason Luke could not call lightning, even though he was among the most powerful Force users she knew, and certainly had the genetic gift for the noble talent.

There was a time when that kind of information would have tempted Luke to give the Dark Side another try, in the interests of acquiring more power. He was grateful to Mara for helping him eschew the quest for ever increasing power, in exchange for a quest for ever increasing understanding.

Dije meditated in a side cavern deep inside her fortress. Only the faintest light and sound came from the workmen setting up living quarters, installing a second backup generator, and stringing more lights to the back entrance a few turns away.

The cave was chill, but not damp. The watercourses that had formed this cave system had been dammed for irrigation long ago.

Her mind floated in the Force much as it would in the White Current. A Vision came to her.

Aliens, tattooed, pierced, with extreme body modifications, all of them devotees of pain in a completely different way than those like Ojaste who reveled in Subspace. They were almost like a parody of the Sith.

No, that wasn't it, exactly; but there was something about them that was not only palpably evil but disquieting in a way that the ordinary evils of a Sith lifestyle were not, at least not to Dije, not anymore. Something… unnatural.

Dije saw the aliens flying strange ships. Saw them in orbit of Sith-ta. Saw them pushing the Blockade satellites out of orbit, to crash into the ground. Into the cities. Mushroom clouds; an inferno of building shells; an eternity of dust; and everywhere, the dead. The bodies not rotting; even the microbes had died.

Dije gasped and her awareness snapped back to the cave, and the present time. "The End of the World," Dije whispered. This was what she was doing it all for. This was the reason for this fortress. The End of the World was coming.

Story continues in Queen of the Sith


	2. Chapter 2

Queen of the Sith: second in the Queen of the Sith trilogy.

War Leader Yaash Kwim of Domain Kwim looked down on the infidel world below him, its image produced by a specialized villip, much like the ones used for communication.

"The Governtist representatives are here, War Leader."

"By all means, send them in. I want them to see this."

A half dozen infidels, wearing their dead technology clothing, polluting the living floor of the ship with their every step, came onto the bridge of the Yuuzhan Vong war vessel. The ship would be cleansed soon enough; for now Yaash took pleasure in granting them their wish.

He addressed the Governtists. "You have invited us here because of those," Yaash began, gesturing to the image of the technology satellites surrounding the planet. "You call those abominations the Blockade, and you wish to be rid of it. You heard that we Yuuzhan Vong are against lifeless technology. You heard that we are here to conquer and rule this galaxy. You claim you wish to bow to our rule and be rid of the Blockade. Bow down to us then, and accept your fate."

Stiffly, visibly swallowing their pride, the Governtists bowed before Yaash Kwim.

"Good. Inferior races should always acknowledge the lordship of the Yuuzhan Vong. Targeting officer. Use the ship's dovin basals to knock those abominations out of orbit. Calculate trajectories to destroy secondary targets."

"Yes, War Leader."

The Governtists looked at each other in confusion. They did not know about the secondary targets, and they could not read the Vong in the Force.

The dovin basals served the purposes of the ship's engines, shields, and tractor beams all at once, but they were none of those. They were living entities which projected singularities which affected gravity. They could move the living ship through space, swallow laser beams, or, given a sufficiently large dovin basal, pull down a moon.

The targeting officer communicated with the ship via a mask which was also a lifeform, like everything the Vong had. The dovin basals nudged at the orbits of the Blockade satellites, sending them crashing down onto the planet, to impact in all the major cities and military installations. The impact clouds were visible from space.

The Governtists stared in horror. "What have you done?" one of them whispered.

"Only what you asked of us," Yaash responded. "We have begun to cleanse your world of technology. This planet is far from the primary invasion path, and Lord Shimrra would not send a fleet with us on this holy project. But we have come for personal glory, and we shall have it, for Domain Kwim. And now, to thank our gods for this victory, we shall make a sacrifice. Six leaders of the conquered world will be a good start."

"You can do this! We invited you here to ally with you. We told you, Sith-ta is the ancient enemy of the Jedi, and we know you hate them above all others!"

"Yes, I am aware of the history of the Jeedai and the Sith, warring against each other many of your centuries ago. But you are not Sith. Everything our spies tell us about this planet shows that you are not Sith, but their enemies." Yaash waved a hand. "Even if you were, we would not ally with you. Alliance implies 'equality', I believe is your word. A foreign concept. You are infidels. Those who hate the Jeedai may serve us, as the Peace Brigade does. But we make no alliances. We are the Yuuzhan Vong. We serve only Yun-Yuuzhan, the god of war. Go to him now."

Yaash gestured, and the guards herded the Governtists off to the place of sacrifice. Some of them tried to fight, with the Force, but their Force-punches went through the Vong like they did not exist. The guards used their living amphistaffs, some in staff form, some in snake form, and subdued the Governtists.

The Vong destroyed both the Blockade and the cities by tipping the orbital Blockade satellites down into the atmosphere. A rain of hell. The orbital weapons platforms struck the ground with the power of E mc 2. Ashes flew on the wind, blotting out the sun. Sith-ta was cratered like a moon. There was a great disturbance in the Force.

Far away, in the direct line of invasion from intergalactic space toward Coruscant, a squadron of X-Wing fighters piloted by Jedi tangled with a flight of Vong coralskippers. They swooped and dived, using the Force to co-ordinate their movements and fire in tandem to get some laser blasts past the dovin basals. But they could not use the Force to sense their foes; the Vong were invisible to their Force senses.

Luke felt the death of Sith-ta in the Force, and slipped out of link with his wingman for a crucial second. The coralskipper he was targeting was not hit, and it destroyed one of the X-Wings. Luke did not waver. He re-established the link and took the coralskipper out on the next pass. He did not stop to wonder what planet had been destroyed or ruined by the Vong; many worlds had died in this war. Some by destruction, and some by the far more horrifying Vongforming that poisoned the air and destroyed all native lifeforms, to replace them with Vonglife.

Luke spared barely a thought for the life of his apprentice, snuffed out in the battle. There would be more losses before this fight was over. He swung around and picked out another target. Destroyed it. Picked another. Destroyed it. Another. Another. Another.

The space station was huge and mostly modern. Only a part of it had originally been a Blockade satellite. It hit like an asteroid, sending up a mushroom cloud that could be seen from space. The dust didn't clear for a year. Kamex Spaceport was blasted to atoms.

The Golan II Defense Platforms which the New Republic had modified to act as Blockade devices and installed to plug up the holes in the Blockade were modern and relatively small, although they still pocked the ground with craters. Where one hit, old trees fell outward from the blast like a crop circle for a hundred kilometers around.

But the original Blockade satellites were ancient. They were nuclear powered. Some of them burned up in the atmosphere, spreading radioactive fallout over the whole planet. Some detonated on the ground, leaving glowing glass holes where cities used to be.

A Vong coralskipper overflew the Sacred Lands on a survey mission. The living ship and the Vong inside it did not see the lush green below them; they saw only the same blasted wasteland as there was everywhere else on Sith-ta. The illusion was complete down to the way the dust blew in the wind of the coralskipper's passage.

Dije's Fruitioner illusionists protected the Sacred Lands, farms and forests and wild places, and all else from the Vong.

In the Winter of Ash, Force-users created artificial suns for the Sacred Lands, to keep the plants alive in the darkness. Illusionists hid the sun, the land, and everything in it: the wild animals in the forest, the farmers in the fields. And they had to maintain an illusion of whatever they Vong thought they were doing there. For that, the Redeemed Ones provided intelligence.

It was a complicated and exhausting illusion, requiring the combined strength and skill of all the remaining Fruitioner illusionists. It was their sacred task to protect the Sacred Lands.

They left the fighting and killing for others. But they knew they could not maintain the Sacred Lands forever unless the Vong were defeated, and the Fruitioners followed Queen Dije even more fanatically than the Sith. For the first time in their history, the Fruitioners understood the concept of holy war.

Dije did not come through the Sacred Lands to get back from the battle into her underground cave fortress. The natural cave entrance opened on the Sacred Lands, but the hidden back entrance came through bare rock and hard radiation. Every time she led her forces out to do battle with the Vong, they all had to decontaminate when they returned.

Dije slumped in a chair as the decon team worked on her and her men. The resistance fighters had run out of technological decontamination gear weeks ago, but Sith and members of the Bright Squads had picked up the slack. They did not have to be vurghs to strip the radioactivity from flesh and equipment, they only had to still the radiation in a variation of a Force technique to reduce temperature, adapted for the needs of the times.

"We've got to hit them on the other side of the planet next time," Dije said to no one in particular, thinking out loud. "We can't draw attention to our location by making too many local raids."

"Didn't there used to be more of the decon team, Lady?" Ojaste mumbled tiredly.

Dije shrugged; she left staffing to Kerruke, so she could concentrate on strategy and learning as much about the enemy as possible. All too soon, even with decon, she would reach the point where she could no longer leave the caves and Sacred Lands very often, and then she would have to turn the fighting over to others. She wanted a visceral feel for her enemy by then.

One of the decon team answered, "We had to send some people up to the airlocks. That's what we're calling the areas where we take in refugees to the Sacred Lands. People try to bring the damnedest things with them. Pictures. Toys. Useless crap. We pile it up and tell them they can come back for it when they learn to decon stuff themselves. We don't have the energy. This team is as overworked as the vurghs."

When decon was over, Dije dismissed her company to find food and rest and healing, but she went directly to the command center, staggering tired and munching on a stale dinner roll that happened to be handy.

Kerruke was in the center of a hive of activity. Desks and computer screens were arrayed around a center stalactite pillar. Kerruke looked up when she entered. "What did you learn?" That had become almost a ritual phrase with them.

"I think it's worse than we thought," Dije replied, plopping down on a station chair that would have been at home on a starship. "The Vong aren't just blocking the Force. They don't exist in the Force. It's not like a ysalamir bubble or a suppression field. They just aren't there. They're less substantial than White Current illusions. Which do affect them, by the way. At least we have that much."

"I don't understand," Kerruke said.

"I don't either. I don't see how they can be alive and not be part of the Force, but they aren't. Illusion can affect them because illusion affects reality. Create a strong enough illusion of a rock, and you have a rock. Pick up a real rock with the Force, and you can throw it at them. But you can't touch them with the Force. Not their bodies, and not their minds. They just aren't there."

"How can we fight something like that?" Kerruke muttered, careful not to let her despair carry too far, in her voice or in the Force.

"We still have the Force; we can still affect the things around them. And we have the art of illusion. And we have guns."

"My Lady," Kerruke said a little louder, changing the subject. "We received a communication for you. The coded signal."

"Ah. Good. Pipe it down to my quarters. And send a meal to me."

Dije did not look at the transmission until she had washed and eaten. The book code was tedious to work with, and she felt stupid-tired. Even before she had gone out with the fighters, she had felt like her brain had exploded and left little brain bits all over the command center. There was so much to learn, and think of, and plan.

The communiqué from Luke was short and blunt. The Vong had driven the Jedi off Yavin 4, Vong sympathizers and appeasement-mongers had driven them off Coruscant, and the Peace Brigade was hunting them down wherever they went.

"We need a safe place to send the Jedi children, to hide. Someplace the Vong would never think to look for them."

Dije coded back, "Don't send them here. The Vong have taken the planet. The Peace Brigade is here too. This will be our last communication. I have to stop using the hypercomm transmitter to keep the Vong from finding our base."

It had been a near thing, just a few days ago. One of the refugees in the airlock zone had refused decon. At first the decon team thought he was just crazy from mental trauma. There was plenty of that going around. So they sent a Fruitioner to talk to him, one of the volunteers who was not a powerful enough illusionist to help disguise the Sacred Lands, and who just did whatever needed doing. And the Fruitioner had tried to soothe the poor man, and had looked at him in the White Current to get an idea of his mental state—and he wasn't there. So the Fruitioner had called over one of the Force-users… and the man did not exist in the Force. The man who was not there suddenly attacked and killed many poor refugees. When he was finally brought down his skin simply curled up on itself, revealing the deliberately disfigured face underneath. A Vong in an ooglith masquer.

When Dije heard about it, she had made sure all the airlock teams had at least one powerful Force-user with them, either Sith or Jedi. And she had made a speech. A telepathic speech, sent mind to mind and relayed to the commons and Fruitioners who could not hear her. She was doing that a lot these days.

Dije was the natural leader of the anti-Vong resistance, not only because it was her fortress that was the base, and her students of illusion who kept the Sacred Lands safe from the Vong, and her students of the Force who shielded it from the radiation. All segments of society respected her.

It was time for another speech, and then she was going to sleep for a week. Well, probably not, but she certainly felt like it.

Dije began her speech the way she always did, with a mental bell sound to get peoples' attention without startling them. "The Vong don't exist in the Force. They are unlife. They call our machines abominations, but they and their unlife biotechnology are the true abomination. They destroy fertile cropland that sings with the Force and the White Current and replace it with unlife. They intentionally create invasive alien species to cause mass extinctions of natural life forms. Unlife cannot be lived with, or reasoned with. We will wage total war until all Vonglife is wiped from the face of Sith-ta. The Vong are affected by illusion, and by physical objects manipulated with the Force. We can shoot them, we can throw rocks at them, we can turn our armies invisible and leap out of thin air at them. But we can't use the Force directly against them. But nevertheless the Vong fear the Force. The Vong fear Jedi. We will give them Jedi to fear. We will expand the Bright Squads. Not by ones and twos, secretly, as we did when we had to hide from the Governtists. No, from today forwards we will establish a Jedi training center, and my three best Jedi will train a hundred, and the hundred will train a thousand, and we will sweep across the planet and rid our home of the Vong."

Darth woke her up with a steaming cup of something or other, soup perhaps. His Fruitioner tutor and protector, a pleasantly ugly woman who was always smiling except at funerals, hovered behind him. Even here, in the heart of the fortress, she was prepared to turn him invisible if anything threatened him.

Darth smiled cheerfully as Dije sipped the soup. He was such a sweet boy. But she worried about him, growing up during this terrible war. And she was away from him so much. He was largely raised by the Fruitioners, out on his tutor's farmstead, and that was just as well.

Dije had once thought Luke turned his students so he could have the pleasure of saving them. Now she wondered if the Dark Side was in his genes. Darth showed no leanings in that direction at all, but his half-siblings, Kerruke's twins, were the terror of the base.

As if her thoughts had summoned them, Piker and Piekke came in, no doubt having seen the light in this room and deduced the occupant was awake. Piekke charged in at a dead run and stuffed something into Darth's pocket. "Here. Hide this." Then the twins roared out again.

Darth dug out the object and cried out. "Oh! Poor thing!" It was a small animal, minus its fur. And the skin underneath it. It breathed shallowly in his hand.

The Fruitioner woman took it from him gently, and used the White Current to take away its pain. "It can't be saved, dear. I'm afraid all we can do is put it out of its misery." With a surprisingly economical motion, the woman snapped its neck.

Dije blinked in surprise. It was easy to forget, thinking of the Fruitioners primarily as pacifists, that they were also farmers. They had no problem killing animals and plants on a regular basis, as long as it was done correctly, with respect and kindness. And as long as the purity of the Land was preserved.

Kerruke ran in, on the trail of her twins.

"You're too late," Darth's tutor told her. "I'll dispose of this poor little thing." Darth followed her out of the room.

Dije set down her soup and gestured Kerruke over to a chair. "There's no doubt those two are going to grow up to be Sith," Dije said.

"Well, and so are we," replied Kerruke. "But the Force is Life. I hate it when I see them killing for no good reason."

Dije scratched at her scalp, where her braids had grown out over the past month. They really needed doing again, but Dije did not have the time. "As a teacher, I've found some people lean naturally to either light or dark. My inborn nature is toward the light. That's how I could find it, here on Sith-ta, when I had no teacher but a holonet show. Sometimes I wonder just what legacy I've sown her, by rewarding my followers with Legacy Samples. I've created ties of kinship with you, with Ojaste, and between you and Ojaste, and between you and everyone else who's used the Sample. That's all to the good. Family sticks together, no matter how much we might argue and hate each other. But I wonder what I'm doing to the next generation."

"Nothing but uniting them, Lady Dije," Kerruke replied. "You were right, when you made that first speech, right after the End of the World. I can still quote it."

Kerruke recited Dije's speech:

"The Force is life. Cities are nothing. We must save our people. Use the art of illusion to save ourselves, and to save fields and forests, wild lands and farms, places that will save us, feed us, give us air and food and water. And we must fight. The time for self-indulgence is past. We must unite. Sith, Fruitioners, Brights, the common people, even those Governtists who are willing to resist the Vong. Together."

Dije placed a hand on Kerruke's shoulder. "My first, best follower. My closest friend." Then she stood up and pulled on her black jacket, and buckled on her sword belt with the lightsaber hilt attached. "Let's kill some Vong."

It was good to do something normal for once, Luke reflected. It was good to remind the Jedi they were not just combat pilots. Although this particular subject touched very close to the sorest spots of the war.

He was teaching the memory cap seminar again. But today, his speech here in the blank newness of the hidden Jedi base did not deal with just-in-case scenarios. For members of the public to see and recognize a Jedi was a risk that was becoming greater every day, with informers taking Peace Brigade credits on every world and station that had a public.

There were a lot of Jedi in this room, young and old. Luke had been amazed to discover that neither Leia nor Mara had ever taken the memory cap course, and he had summoned this group at once.

There were some non-Jedi on this base, but Luke had decided not to ask for volunteers from among them for this. The Jedi had been stung by too many accusations lately, and he was not about to do anything to sow suspicion among his own best supporters. So the Jedi were practicing on each other.

All went routinely until he let Leia into his own mind. He did not expect her to find anything.

"Luke, there's something in there."

"Thoughts, I hope," Luke smiled.

"I'm serious. You have a cap."

"There isn't supposed to be," Luke said. "I'm supposed to be the control."

"I can't tell what's under it, but I can tell, well, the structure… no it's more like a texture. Luke, I think it was placed in here against resistance."

"You mean against my will? Nobody's that strong. Except Kyp, but I can't imagine…"

"No, it was definitely constructed by a female."

"Um, how long ago? Can you tell?"

"Long. But after you became a Jedi."

"Can you see the person who placed it?"

Leia concentrated briefly, then she gasped. "It's a Dark Lady of the Sith. The tattoos are distinctive. I remember them on Dije. Wait, wait, wait, I think it actually WAS Dije. Dije grown up."

"Oh. Then I know what's under there. Don't pop the cap. I don't want those memories back."

"What is it?"

"The day I wept purple tears."

Mara exclaimed, "The what? When was this?"

"You didn't know about it? It was all over the holonet news for months. The major channels picked up Ongreya's Psy Healer subcast. That was how Ongreya came to be my apprentice."

"Luke, I can't believe you didn't talk to me about this!" Mara admonished.

"I thought everybody knew. Please exit now, Leia."

"Oh," said Leia. " Sure."

Luke puts his shields back up. "Sorry, but that incident isn't something I want to talk about with the whole room."

"Later, then," Leia and Mara said in unison.

The woman walked. She walked through the stinging dust, through the poisoned air, through the darkness. Walking was a precious gift. She would keep walking until she reached the rumored green land, or until she fell over dead. Her tongue swelled up in her mouth from lack of water. Somewhere along the way, she dropped her weapon, and didn't notice. She had ceased to be aware of the man walking beside her.

She saw something through the haze of dust and pain. A swirl of figures, and a shimmer of illusion. Someone caught her arm, and led her to a bed. Someone worked some ritual over her, as if washing her, hands in her aura. Someone gave her soft food and drink. And the green land opened around her. Multiple suns hung in the air below the shield. Birds. There were birds, still. They survived here, as no where else on Sith-ta.

The woman slept. When she awoke she was given more food, and asked to what people she belonged. At first the question confused her, and she fell back on the identifiers of her childhood. She said, "Three."

They left her alone for a few days then, to recover her strength and her wits. The man tended to her burns, and poured energy into the flesh beneath them, but he did not bother with cosmetic treatments. He healed himself first, and then her, but they both looked no different afterwards. Which proved how exhausted he must be, because he liked to play with appearance.

Then someone came to ask her again, and she replied, "Sith." They nodded, as if that had been a test and she had passed, and took her to a noisome cave filled with piles of bat dung and dung beetles, and then she was in a military base. The man who had walked beside her through the dust was still at her side.

She saw someone she knew, and called out, "Ojaste!"

Ojaste came to her. Ojaste looked at the bald, starved figure, still covered with radiation burns although she had been decontaminated, and did not know her.

"It's me. Evlyn."

"Evlyn! I thought you lived in Kamex. How did you survive?"

"I wasn't in Kamex. I was in a prison work camp, out away from anything anybody'd want to bomb. This is the prison doctor. He's a Governtist, but he's a vurgh, and I figured you'd need all you could get."

"You figured right," Ojaste said. "Welcome. Both of you."

"Why don't you do something about all those bugs?"

"The Force is Life. The Queen is trying to save whatever is left of our world's ecology."

Luke couldn't stay in his X-Wing forever. For one thing, endless maneuvering only used up fuel, and their supply was haphazard at best. For another thing, he knew Leia was going to stand around in the fighter bay until he returned, even if she waited all day. He was going to have to say something sooner or later.

So he landed, and as he expected, she walked over to him as he was telekinetically lifting R2D2 from the fighter's droid socket.

"Luke, can we talk about what I saw during the seminar this morning?"

Luke had thought of many things to say, but decided to go with total honesty. "Leia, I know you're only asking because you care, but please understand, you're the last person in the universe I want to discuss my sexuality with, OK?"

"Oh."

He went off to his quarters, knowing he could not turn aside Mara's concerns so easily.

Evlyn was not the only reunion the wave of refugees brought. Dije felt a sickeningly familiar Force-presence, and knew that presence had also detected her.

Dije's mother stormed in. The first thing she did was not to greet her long lost daughter, but to pick up some anonymous crate and throw it at Dije with the Force. "Dije! They told me this place is yours. It's a pigsty!"

Dije gestured and batted the crate aside. "Are you insane? Can't you see my face?"

"No," Mrs. Kun said, surprised into softness. "What's wrong with your face?"

"You can't see. Were you blinded by the flash?"

"Yes." Mrs. Kun's soft mood continued, and Dije went to her, and stood close, although they did not embrace.

"How did you survive the destruction of Kamex?"

"I was in a police van, behind an energy shield."

"Oh. What were you—never mind. I'll have one of the vurghs tend to your eyes."

"What was I arrested for? Trying to buy military arms from an undercover. I was planning to kill my ex-husband."

"Dad?"

"Right."

"If you can't see, how did you judge this place a pigsty?"

"I can smell it. Also I tripped on things."

"What you smell is death. Soon enough we'll give death back to the unlife, to the Vong. My Jedi legion is nearly ready."

"You're the one behind the Bright Squads? The great Jedi leader?"

"That's me."

"That's ironic."

"What is?"

"Your name. Your dad and I went round and round about that name. You know it's an old tradition to name a child an anagram of something powerful and frightening, to keep evil spirits away. If you were born a boy your dad would have gotten to name you Corran, after the rancor. I picked your name. The most powerful and terrifying thing I could think of. Dije is an anagram of Jedi."

"Huh. Funny. I know a Jedi named Corran."

"Is he from an old Sith family?"

Dije shrugged, realized her mother couldn't see it, and replied, "Maybe. Before the Blockade there was a lot more mobility between the Jedi and the Sith than either group would like to admit, I think. And after the Blockade, a lot of the Sith of the debased tradition started as Jedi. I've learned a lot about that history. But we can catch up later. Right now I'll go get you a vurgh. They're overburdened, treating all the radiation poisoning, so pay it no mind if the one I find you is a little crotchety. They've all fallen back on plain old irritation to keep their powers sharp."

"I understand. Dije? What's wrong with your face?"

"Nothing. It just has more tattoos than the last time you saw me."

"Oh. Oh, this isn't your house. It's your Territory."

"Yes."

"Oh. Oh sandworms!" There was fear in her voice then. She would certainly never have thrown anything at Lord Thodvexer, and he was her own brother.

"It's OK. Just stay here, a vurgh will be along soon." Dije turned and left.

Luke's quarters in the new Jedi base were spare, and there was still a suitcase sitting in the corner.

Mara had not unpacked all their clothes yet, but she had unshipped her weapons, and had them laid out on the table, checking them one by one. She left her task when Luke came in, shifting all her attention to him, although she sat poised and patient.

"Right," he said, flopping down onto the edge of the bed. He tried to make an effort at conversation, thinking perhaps he could open by saying, if you're preparing those to get back at the people who did it, you're too late, Dije hunted them all down years ago. But that would imply Mara would take revenge, and the dark side was the one subject they never joked about. He tried to think of something else to say.

"Luke, I did hear a rumor about that, after I got back from the Car'das hunt with Lando. But I thought it was a false story. The gutter journalists are always making things up about celebrities."

"Not in this case. I thought you knew." Luke briefly put a hand over his eyes, as if to hide the telltale stains that had faded long ago. "All these years I thought I suppressed those memories myself."

"What happened?"

Luke made a capping gesture. "I don't know. I'm glad I don't know, however it came about. I thought—I thought of all the terrible things that have happened, this was the one thing I couldn't face. I thought I did that to myself. It must have been aboard the ship, after she rescued me. That's where I woke up."

"So you really were kidnapped by that purple tears show?"

Luke nodded, not meeting eyes.

"If I'd known…"

"If you'd known, what? You wouldn't have been as free with me? We wouldn't have had as much fun?"

Mara sat down beside him and put her arms around him. "You're right. However you got to be the way you are, it's the way you are, and I love you. That's always how you've felt about me, and why should your past be more of a trap than mine?"

Luke kissed her. She kissed him back.

Dije's mother saw her, and smiled. But Dije shouted, "Snake eyes! With slits! What have you done to her?"

The vurgh from the prison said, I've got to have some fun."

Dije was tempted to blast him, but her mother could see, and Evlyn had been right, they needed all the vurghs they could find. Dije spun and stalked off to the command center to think of new ways to kill the enemy.

The Redeemed Ones slogged into their quarters after a long day cleaning latrines. The Vong still called them the Shamed Ones, because their bodies had rejected their bioimplants, showing they had lost the favor of the gods. But now they were the Redeemed Ones, and they had a new religion. They had a leader, waiting for them in the shadows.

Ni stepped out of the wall. He had a lightsaber clipped to his belt. "What have you got for me, my Redeemed Ones?"

"We know how to get to the yammosk."

"Good. Without the war coordinator, their ships will be easy prey. Drop these in with the yammosk. They are called grenades. This is how you arm them. Toss them and flee. Do it tomorrow at dawn."

"We will, Jeedai Ni."

At dawn the yammosk went down, and the Bright Squads overran the camp. They cut down the Vong with lightsabers, and tossed rocks at the coralskippers. There were many casualties, but they won the day. And the Redeemed Ones were liberated, and sent to infiltrate other camps. No one paid any attention to a Shamed One, casually passing with a living mop-creature on a leash.

Ni went back to the caves. Dije took the excuse of the victory to have a celebration outside the caves in the Sacred Lands. There was music and wine and food. All kinds of people were there, Sith, Fruitioners, Jedi, commons, and even former Governtists like the prison doctor.

Dije made a speech out loud for once, although it was still rebroadcast telepathically, to those who had to stay at the margins to keep the shields, illusions, and suns up, and man the airlock stations.

"There are no unimportant people on Sith-ta now. We're all in this together. No more murdering, raping, slaving, no more territorial wars. We are all on the same side, united against the Vong."

This announcement was met with scattered clapping from the commons and Fruitioners, and shocked stares from the Sith. The Jedi generally looked shocked as well; this was only natural, as most of the Dije's Jedi WERE Sith.

Dije described Ni's great victory, and how the Bright Squads were the bright hope of Sith-ta as well as of the Redeemed Ones, and the Jedi Knights chanted, "Ni! Ni! Ni!" For the whole rest of the party, the Knights could not get enough of hailing their leader's name.

While the Knights said Ni, the Fruitioners melted into the forest in pairs to perform fertility rituals. The Sith and commons drank and smoked strobe, and when the Fruitioner couples started to come back to the main party, they got the commoners and even some of the Sith to dance with them.

Dije looked out over the scene in what passed for happiness in those times, a kind of intensely focused, blitzed enjoyment, deliberately walling off the future and the worries that came with it.

Kerruke looked relaxed for once. Someone else was taking care of the twins today. Not a Fruitioner, like the family that took in Darth; Kerruke's twins would ride right over such peaceful people. No, the twins' babysitter was none other than Evlyn, hideous, bald, cruel, and more than a match for their antics.

Ojaste looked wistful. Dije opened up her Force senses and sampled the emotions radiating from Ojaste. What she encountered was a physical longing that was almost hunger, almost lust, almost the need for strobe, but none of those things. Dije recognized it instantly, because she felt it herself. Ojaste wanted to play.

Dije had not played since returning to her own people, because she could not both lead and submit. But she suddenly realized she could feel the incredible subspace high again, by proxy, through Ojaste. If she were in link with Ojaste.

Ojaste.

My Lady?

I know what you desire. You desire subspace.

Yes. I miss it, but I don't miss Dai-Oni. He was a… jerk.

You don't have to censor your thoughts with me, Ojaste. Do you want to play?

Ojaste's eyes widened as she realized what Dije was asking. Yes. Yes.

"Come here, Ojaste," Dije said aloud, beckoning to her. As Ojaste walked over, Dije cleared the table with a gesture and patted the wooden surface.

Ojaste grinned, shucked out of her black fatigue jacket and hopped up on the table, settling comfortably on her stomach with her arms folded up beneath her chin.

Dije pulled Ojaste's tank shirt up, accessing her back. Kerruke, Ni, and some of the other old members of Kerruke's crew noticed the play preparations and gathered around to watch.

Dije looked around for something to play with. There wasn't much there but a wooden spoon, and that didn't really appeal to Dije. She pulled off her sword belt, detached the lightsaber and set it aside on the bench, and wound up the extra length of the belt until she had a good section. Her first smack was not tentative or light, but it did not crack the way she wanted it to. Dije tried again, and this time heard a nice snap, and left a triangular red tip-mark on Ojaste's back from the stiff leather belt tip.

Ojaste sighed and settled down further. That was the way. Dije smacked her again, and the crack sounded perfect. Satisfied with her technique, Dije opened herself fully to the mindlink with Ojaste and let her arm go on automatic. The sensations were exquisite.

More Sith crowded around to watch. Some of the other peoples watched too.

They sank together into subspace. The party noise ceased, and all was silence and light. Then there was the music: no instrument of the world but some cosmic melody below or beyond normal senses. The galaxy opened out, turned inside out. There were rivers and still spaces, sound and caesura, light and shadow, all in some entire whole, some asymmetrical order just out of the grasp of human understanding. It was perfection; it was Light; it was Life; it was the Force; it was Goddess.

Dije came back to herself. Her hands were empty. She had dropped her belt. Ojaste still lay on the table, eyes half closed, an expression of pure pleasure on her face. She was breathing slowly, as if in deep meditation. Her upper back was red.

Dije ran her hand over the inflamed skin. It was hot. She pulled ice to her hand with the Force, out of the barrel keeping the drinks cool. Dije applied the ice to Ojaste's back, letting it melt as she slid it across the welted skin.

Ojaste hmmed a deeply satisfied sigh.

It was night on Coruscant. Duchess Koreen looked out at the glittering lights of the city, and wondered if it would ever be the same. The war had not reached Coruscant space yet, but already everything before her seemed like tawdry jewels in comparison to the glory of Palpatine's court.

"Duchess Koreen?" asked some little alien.

"Correct," Koreen sniffed. Well, if one ventured into a nightclub these days, one would doubtless encounter the public.

"I understand you were once quite prominent at court, when there still was a court."

"Yes," she replied, less disdainfully. Most aliens did not speak highly of Imperial rule. Perhaps this odd little furry fellow was alright.

"Let me introduce myself. I am Pey'slor. When you were at court, were you acquainted with Mara Jade?"

"Not well," Koreen said. Now she was intrigued.

"But you would know her by sight?"

"Certainly. Why do you ask?"

"Is this her?" Pey'slor showed her a flimsi of a red haired woman in a marketplace. The printout looked like it had been taken by a security camera, from a high point of view.

"Why do you ask?" Koreen said again, this time smelling money rather than just entertainment. The Duchess was nominally wealthy, but the land she owned was on a planet the Vong had wrecked with their Vongforming, and it would never be useful again. "Is there a reward?"

"There is a bounty on Mara Jade Skywalker, yes."

"Skywalker?" Koreen squeaked. She lowered her voice at once, habits of intrigue reasserting themselves. "Mara Jade married a goody-goody Jedi from some dire little farm planet on the Outer Rim? I can't believe it. She's the source of the expression 'jaded appetite'. Those in the know used to call her the Emperor's Hand-Job. Not to her face, of course."

The furry alien made a dismissive gesture. Bothan, that was what he was, Duchess Koreen realized. Born intriguers, the lot of them. Whatever reward he offered her, he was sure to pocket a good deal more. That was acceptable, however. Koreen would point out the redhead but she had no intention of being anywhere nearby when short and furry tried to take her out.

"Perhaps there is more to him than meets the eye," Pey'slor suggested.

Koreen giggled. She decided she liked this Bothan. "Yes, that's her. Where do you need me to go to identify her, and how much do I get?"

The peasant ran up to the three Jedi on the road. "My good Sirs! Are you the Knights Who Say Ni?"

"Ni! Ni!" responded one of the knights, in a high pitched tone. For some reason Ni Smashlier's Bright Squad had decided their war cry must be done in a virtual scream.

"Oh good!" said the commoner, pointing back across his fields. "Please come kill the giant snake!"

The Knights followed the farmer to an open meadow where a tree-topping black serpent feasted on the remains of a nerf. When the snake saw the new prey, it coiled and struck. But it was no match for Jedi reflexes. One of the Knights ignited his lightsaber and cut off the snake's head.

The snake flopped down in the field and the peasant rejoiced and thanked the Knights. The Knights, sensing radiation, decontaminated the snake carcass.

The peasant invited all his neighbors to eat fried snake, and they all got new snakeskin boots and coats, and the local cobbler made snakeskin boots for the Jedi and the Sith. And some of the Sith came down to the village to have entire outfits made of snakeskin and paid the peasants well for them, and everyone was happy.

Except Dije, even though she loved her new black snakeskin bodysuit. She wanted to know where the snake came from. "A giant snake. Who made it?"

"No one, My Lady, they are not illusion," replied Tereboon, who was a Fruitioner and Dije's best student of illusion. Even the Fruitioners and commons had taken to calling Dije by her title.

Dije turned to Kerruke. "Send someone to investigate the giant snake problem. I want to know where it came from and if there are more of them." 

"Yes, My Lady."

Luke greeted Jacen warmly. "Welcome back. I feared you might not return from Vong captivity. You were away so long before, on your quest to find a new way. When you came back to help the Jedi during the war, I always had the feeling you were only going to be with us for a little while, but I thought you would go back to your quest, not be captured."

"But I have been on my quest, in a way," Jacen said. "And I have learned much. But I'm ready to be a Jedi again. A new kind of Jedi."

"A new kind?"

"I've learned many things, from the Theran Listeners, the Aing-Ti monks, even the Fallanassi, who broke their long tradition of training only females. Mostly because of your example, I hear."

Luke smiled. "It's nice to know they think well of me."

"I believe the argument ran something like, well Akanah trained Luke Skywalker and the universe didn't fall apart."

Luke laughed. "I see."

"All these peoples use something like the Force, and I'm convinced they are all related, that they all create a unified whole. Each by themselves misses the big picture. I think the Jedi have the chance to incorporate a Balance Way, to be the group to see the total picture. After I escaped from the Vong on Coruscant, I found myself in the ruins of the old Jedi Temple. I didn't have a vision, or anything like that, but I did reconnect with the Force there, and I realized something. The Old Order yearned for something they never achieved: Balance. It was what they thought the Jedi should be, but did not know how to make it happen. I think the New Order can. The Jedi should not simply be in the service of Life but of Balance."

Jacen did not mention that when he reconnected with the Force in the ruins, it was the Dark Side, and he had not escaped but had been freed by Vergere. After she broke him. Nor did he say that Vergere had become his Master, nor that she served neither the Vong nor the people of her own galaxy but her own ambition alone. Nor that she was a disciple of the thousand year old tradition that began with Darth Bane: the tradition of only-two. As was Jacen.

"But the Force is Life," Luke said. As soon as he said it, he realized it was a Sith teaching. He shook his head. "You're right. I've read a lot about the final days of the Old Order. They were searching for Balance, almost obsessively. The obsession of some Masters with the Prophesy of the Chosen One put undue pressure on the one they thought was Chosen, pressure that ultimately destroyed them."

"Perhaps that was what had to happen," Jacen suggested. "To fulfill the Prophesy. The Old Order was hidebound and could not change in the way they needed to, to bring Balance."

"Perhaps. I'll think on it. But I feel—" Luke felt that he himself must remain in the service of Life. He knew that was the right path for him. But he could not listen only to his heart in this matter, because that was the way of the Sith. "I think you are right about the Balance Way. And I will tell all the Jedi to listen to your insight in this matter."

All unknowing, trying to avoid the truth he had learned from the ancient tradition of the Sith, Luke fell to the tradition of only-two. He spread the Balance Way among his students. And yet still felt in his heart that Sith were right, and the Force was Life. But he never said so, believing that his own dedication to that principle only proved that he was still a Sith, as he had been initiated a Sith, as he would always be a Sith.

Ojaste picked up dust with the Force and flung it into the eyes of the Vong warrior. Then she shot at him with a blaster, and drilled him through the gut. But the warrior shrugged off the pain and charged, and hit Ojaste with his amphistaff. Ojaste blocked, but the amphistaff went to snake form and coiled around her arm, and bit her with its deadly poison.

One of the illusionists struck back at the warrior with a classic Sith snake, and ripped out his throat.

Ojaste fell on top of her fallen enemy. She had not mastered the Jedi healing trance, but she knew how to neutralize the poison. She concentrated on clearing away the amphistaff poison while the battle raged on around her. Friends and foes alike ignored her as she lay open-eyed on the battlefield, watching the fight through a haze.

She saw weapons fire, and the Vong returning fire with thud bugs. She saw dueling serpents, amphistaff and illusion. She saw large rocks thrown telekinetically. The Vong and Sith closed for hand to hand combat. Amphistaffs whacked, fangs sunk into flesh.

At close range, the Vong had the advantage. They were tall, strong, armored, immune to pain— pain was part of their religion, in fact—and not used to relying on a power that did not work against their opponents. That was a huge factor in the Vongs' endless victories over the Sith and Jedi.

Ojaste spared a moment to reflect that her lack of physical conditioning probably had led to her loss against the skull-faced warrior whose armored body she was lying on. This was her first battle after taking a year off from combat to have her child. Her Legacy Child. Like the Lady's son, Ojaste's little Skywalker was safe in the Sacred Lands, surrounded by powerful illusionists, and the peace of the farmland. She wondered if she would ever see her daughter again.

Then the sounds of combat ceased. A Vong hauled her up by the hair. He stuck a tizowyrm in her ear, and then she could understand his speech. "We will break you, Jeedai."

"I'm not… Jedi…" Ojaste whispered. She reached for the Force, but was too weak to fight. She reached for the White Current, but found she could not concentrate enough in her weakened state.

She passed out for a time, and woke up in one of the Vong's creepy living dwellings. The floor was warm and slightly fleshy. There were Vong warriors there. She was still too weak to fight effectively, so she did not try.

The Vong had many tattoos and multiple facial mutilations, so he must be of high rank, Ojaste concluded. The ugly Vong gestured for other Vong, and two warriors brought a little commoner boy forward. He was bald and his skin was sickly, and he clearly had radiation poisoning. They must have found him in the wasteland.

"Tell us where your base is, or we will kill him."

Ojaste did not respond. The Force was Life; but the boy was dead either way, and Ojaste was not about to endanger the only place left on the planet where people were not dying of the radiation. Without that, there was no hope for anyone.

"You Jeedai value individual lives. We have learned this. Hostages. Tell us or he dies."

"I'm not a Jedi. I am a Sith."

"Jeedai use the Force. I see you use the Force in battle."

"Sith use the Force too," Ojaste replied. "Can't you see my tattoo? I am Sith."

The Vong regarded her for a long moment. Then he turned to the other warriors. "Kill him."

The Vong slit the boy's throat. His blood sank into the floor and the floor seemed to shudder in enjoyment of the feeding.

"So, Sith," said the Vong. "You are not so unlike us, then. Perhaps you would enjoy an introduction to the Embrace of Pain."

"Perhaps I would," agreed Ojaste.

Luke and a group of non-Jedi with a captured Peace Brigader. This is the source of the future Bothan Jedi.

"I can't."

"This isn't the time to be squeamish! I understand your moral objections—"

"No, let me explain. I could get through his natural mental shields, but if I used that much force there wouldn't be much left. He'd no longer know the information we're looking for. He's untrained but Force-strong. And iron-willed. Exactly like Leia when she was interrogated by Vader. I can't pull the location of the captured Jedi out of him for the same reason Vader couldn't pull the location of the Rebel base out of her."

"Force-strong? You mean he's a potential Jedi? A Peace Brigader?"

"Political opinions aren't genetic. You didn't know you're one of us, did you?"

"Me?" Shaky, disbelieving. "This is a trick. It's got to be. You're trying to get me on your side."

"Why would I bother, if I could really just take the information from your mind?"

"Because—you think it's wrong. And you don't want to admit it to your soldier friends."

"If you think that, then you're already on my side. Aren't you?"

"I guess you're really not in my head," he sneered.

"Sargeant, leave us alone please."

The soldier left.

"So explain it to me," Luke invited.

"I'm not in the Peace Brigade because I hate Jedi. You don't understand us at all. I'm doing this to save everybody else. The Yuzhan Vong demand the Jedi be turned over to them. They won't kill those who cooperate with them. The Jedi and some of the fringe worlds are the only ones keeping the war going. You are getting people killed! Whole worlds destroyed!"

"The Vong are doing that. We're out to stop them."

"It takes two sides to make a war!"

"It only takes one side to make a slaughter. If the Vong aren't opposed, they'll kill all of us 'infidels'."

"You can't win. Everybody else can see it. That's why the New Republic hasn't declared war."

"But they have, now. Your argument is a leftover from the early days of the war. The situation has changed."

"It's not too late to stop the war. If everybody would just stop fighting, the Yuzhan Vong wouldn't have any reason to keep killing."

"But they do. They're out to remake worlds to suit themselves and destroy all the worlds they don't want to keep. They mean to drive out all the native lifeforms of this galaxy, down to the last microbe. Surely you can see it, after what they did to Ithor. A beautiful, peaceful world without any technology on the surface at all, exactly what the Vong claim is the right way to live. Except they only want Vonglife to survive. You can see that, can't you?"

"What else can we do? They don't kill everybody. Better that some people are left alive as slaves than that everybody dies. The Peace Brigade is out to trade a few lives for a lot of lives. Hand over the Jedi, save whole worlds."

"A noble thought. I can see you made a reasoned, principled and agonized decision about this early in the war. But the evidence has proven you wrong. The Vong aren't stopping."

"They will. They must."

"That's just wishful thinking, now. You haven't let yourself re-evaluate your position. It's hard to admit you're wrong about something so important. But you didn't have all the facts back then that you have now."

"I know! But I can't switch sides now. Among my people, we change sides all the time, and nobody thinks anything of it. As children we play the Traitor's Game, where the children form lines with linked hands, and steal other teams' players by pulling them off the ends of their lines. It's normal among Bothans to switch sides. But other species don't think that way. It wouldn't matter what I decide now, I'm already a prisoner. Even if I decide to give you the information you want, I can't do anything useful now."

"If you join me, truly and sincerely, I will have you released. I can tell when someone is lying, so all you have to do is speak from your heart and tell me you want to join me."

"Join you, how? I don't think those soldiers out there will hand me a blaster rifle and a uniform."

"Not join the New Republic military. Join me. Join the Jedi."

"Me?" There was a dawning hope in his voice, his eyes, his posture.

"You do have the potential. I have many duties, but I would be glad to take you as my apprentice. Will you join me?"

"Yes," he whispered. Then more confidently, "Yes, Master."

"You no longer need those." Luke gestured and the energy binders fell away. "Where did the ship go?"

"Bilbringi."

Luke nodded. "I can feel the truth in you." Luke stood up. "Stick close to me." He opened the door and they both went out.

A nervous lieutenant had joined the soldiers outside. "Ah, good. Lieutenant, tell the command center we'll be setting course for Bilbringi. Peys'lor is not a prisoner. He's to have free access to all nonclassified areas."

"Sir?" The lieutenant asked.

Luke did not explain. "Peys'lor, follow me." 

"Yes, Master."

Luke set off across the base without a backward glance, and Peys'lor followed him.

The lieutenant asked the sergeant, "What did he do to him?"

"I don't know, sir. Skywalker asked to be left alone with the prisoner."

"Well, that's just downright creepy. Ten minutes and the enemy is calling him Master."

"Whatever works, sir."

"I'm just glad he's on our side."

"The Bothan?"

"Skywalker." 

Ojaste did not struggle as the creature on the ceiling of the Vong ship pulled her up into its arms. She was probably going to die. But she was determined to push away her fear and find what pleasure she could in her last hours.

The Embrace of Pain worked its tendrils through her skin and flesh, holding her close. Ojaste did not really hang from the ceiling so much as become part of the ceiling. The tendrils started to pulse and stretch. The pain increased.

Ojaste knew that very soon she would reach the point where she would have to start holding her breath to keep from screaming. She anticipated that point as a fighting nashta anticipates prey in its teeth. That was the point at which she would start to buzz and spin and slip into subspace.

The Vong below asked her something. Ojaste ignored it, concentrating on the pain. She started holding her breath in time to the pulses. Those who said subspace was about trust and submission were completely wrong. Subspace was a purely physical phenomenon, born of endorphins and oxygen deprivation. Of reaction to pain, and the stifling of screams. At least, that was what it was for Ojaste.

The Vong asked her a question again. It had no meaning. Ojaste's mind had gone wordless.

The creature bored further into her, until the whole universe opened out like a flower. Then it set her gently down. The tendrils withdrew. The Embrace of Pain did not kill; that was what the Vong used on themselves, to achieve religious goals.

But the Vong who held Ojaste captive were not done with her. They could not accept that an infidel might be like them, and embrace the pain of life. They thought they simply needed to do more, to find her breaking point.

Ojaste was limp in their arms, but she giggled as they carried her off. She was deep in subspace.

They took her to the sacrifice pit. Here, there were coral chopping blocks where the Vong gave up their hands to the gods, to have them replaced with Vonglife animal parts such as radank claws. The pit was where the Governtists had died. Their angry spirits still swarmed the pit in the Force, unable to find anything permanent and nonliving to become their long homes. They swirled about Ojaste, but she had nothing but clothes, and no one would make their permanent dwelling in a snakeskin, which could rot.

Suddenly Ojaste was afraid. For the first time, she did not have confidence about her own death. Still in her living body, she cast about for something to house her spirit once her body gave up the ghost.

Then she saw a being of Light. She did not know who it was, but she knew it was a Jedi. Perhaps it was someone she knew, from one of the Bright Squads with whom she had fought against the Vong. Ojaste knew what she must do.

The Vong put her hand on the chopping block. Before the living blade could descend, Ojaste stretched out to the Force. To the Light. Her body fell before the blood flowed, and then it disappeared before it hit the floor.

Ojaste became one with the Force.

Beauty. Light. Love. Compassion.

Ojaste flew down to Sith-ta, to say good-bye to Lady Dije. Her spirit appeared before the Lady, and smiled. Then she rose up singing.

Ojaste glided through the air to the Sacred Lands, to the bright green and the living Force. She passed through the wooden wall of the large Fruitioner home and found her daughter. The child did not see her, not yet. She was only an infant, and years away from her first steps into the larger world of the Force. But Ojaste would always be there, watching over her.

Dije sighed when Ojaste's Force-ghost had gone. "Kerruke. Assemble the people. For Ojaste's funeral."

There had been all too many funerals in these past days, and weeks, and months. Dije usually held them en masse, but Ojaste was special to her, and to her inner circle. Still, she kept her speech short.

"The world is illusion. But it is a beautiful illusion, the craft of the mind of Fala. In the nightmare of war, remain true to the dream. Where there is ugliness, bring beauty. Where there is hate, bring love. Where there is fear, bring comfort."

Then the gathering broke up. Some went back to their duties, others gathered into little circles of friends to speak of the dead in low voices.

Ni approached Dije. "Sorry to bother you at this time, My Lady, but I have a report about the giant snakes."

"SnakeS plural?"

"Yes. They are mutants. From the wastelands. They got into the Sacred Lands by burrowing under the ground. We're going to have to extend the shields underneath the ground if we want to keep them out."

Dije sighed. "Do we have enough Force-users left to double the size of the shield and still maintain a decent fighting force?"

"I don't know, My Lady."

"Thank you, Ni. I'll take the staffing question up with Kerruke. Your investigators can return to their normal duties now."

Evlyn felt Ojaste die. The shock distracted her from the battle, and a Vong thudbug caught her in the face. Grief and pain combined into a powerful anger. Evlyn knocked the bug away and reached out with the Force. She knew she could not use the Force directly against the Vong; she knew she could fling things at them but could not Force-shove them, could sense disturbances they made in the surroundings but could not sense them, but Evlyn longed to jab the Force right through them.

She abandoned what she knew and poured out her rage and hate at the nearest Vong warrior. She felt little stabs over her hands and then Force-lightning poured from her. To her shock, the electric blue crackle caught the Vong and left a smoking hole in his chest.

He fell to the ground, and the battle paused as everyone, Vong, Sith, and Jedi, realized what had happened. An eerie silence descended, broken only by the sighing of the radioactive dust.

"The Force generates the lightning," Evlyn whispered. "But then it becomes just lightning. Electricity. Which can affect the Vong." In dark joy, in blissful hate, Evlyn called the lightning again. The Vong fell like crumbled masonry in the ruins of the cities.

The battle was won, and the Sith cheered for Evlyn and called her Lady. They bore her up on their shoulders, made light with the Force. They arrived in time for Ojaste's funeral, then before the crowd fully dispersed, they called for a tattooist and a celebration.

Ojaste's wake and Evlyn's ennobling party combined into one event. Dije took advantage of the occasion to make another speech, this time announcing the philosophy of kasenth, on which she had long labored.

Some of the Fruitioners danced the kasenthos, an ancient folk dance, as Dije proclaimed the people should adopt resource-neutral entertainment, kasenthos, and the resource-neutral philosophy, kasenth. So few things could be decontaminated and brought into the Sacred Lands, and so few things had survived the destruction of the cities; but things were a burden, and music, dance, food, play, and love were the order of the day.

Evlyn stood at her own ennobling party listening to another Dark Lady order the way the people must live, and knew that was an annatural situation. That was not the way of the Sith, as she had learned it. The Sith themselves seemed not to mind change, but Evlyn was a convert to the Sith way and was determined that things must be done as they had always been done.

Hatred boiled up in her heart. But she could not challenge Lady Dije now. She had no gang, and Lady Dije had the whole world, what was left of it. To take this Territory she would need an army. And she knew where to get one.

War Leader Yaash directed his troops in three great prongs: a ground assault against a midrange airlock, backed up by an air assault, to draw the armies of his enemy out into the open, and when the infidel were fully engaged in the fight, a third action against the enemy fortress itself. This third prong would not approach through the Sacred Lands, which would be well defended, but would sneak up on the fortress's back door into the wastelands, from which the enemy had sortied forth against his glorious Yuuzhan Vong warriors so many times.

Yaash was tempted to lead his troops into battle himself, for personal glory and for the morale of his warriors, but he had not risen to his present rank by taking unnecessary risks. He remained safely aboard his ship in orbit, and deployed his army on the planet below.

Evlyn told the Twins, "I'm going to be right back. You two stay put in these rooms or I'll whale on your feet til you can't walk when I get back. Clear?"

Big-eyed, Kerruke's twins nodded.

Evlyn strode out and up to the narrow, highly defensible tunnel. Her new allies would not need to assail the rock of the mountain and fight their way through the steel doors and down this cave tunnel to get to the main fortress.

Evlyn put a Vong nose-filter insect into each nostril. The creatures attached themselves painfully. The Vong reveled in such things; Evlyn only endured it.

Evlyn walked up to the two members of the decon team stationed by the back door, who were its only guards. They greeted her cautiously. They surely sensed her evil intent, but then, Sith always had evil intent. It was nothing unusual.

She did not alert them that she was about to attack by drawing on the Force. One of the things she had learned from watching Lady Dije was how terrifyingly unpredictable her mastery of the Light Side made her, because she could use the Force without enraging herself first. Evlyn could not do that, as she had no inclination toward the Light, but she could attack without using the Force or the White Current at all.

Evlyn produced a shell creature from a pocket of her snakeskin jacket. She crushed it in her hand, releasing a deadly cloud of poison gas.

One of the guards reacted by holding his breath and attacking her with a Force-shove, but Evlyn was far stronger in the Force. She reached out with the Dark Side and snapped his neck.

The other guard tried to sound the alarm telepathically. Evlyn crushed his mind. Her strength in the Force knew no bounds. She knew she was much stronger than most of the Sith, definitely stronger than Lady Dije. The strongest among the Sith should rule, and Evlyn knew she was the strongest. She knifed the second guard, but drug out his death a bit longer than necessary, just for the fun. Evlyn loved her own power.

She wiped the blade on the dead guard's clothes, and when she sheathed it, the knife had a new glow, only visible in the Force: the object-bound spirit of the dead Sith. Evlyn smiled. Then she opened the fortress door to the Vong.

"Kerruke! Send another column to reinforce the Bright Squads at Clay Gap." Dije pointed to a spot on a glowing three dimensional map created for her by an illusionist who was also a Sith, and who was in constant telepathic contact with Sith and Jedi in the field, keeping track of the many engagements.

Suddenly there were Vong warriors right in the cave with her!

Dije did not stop to wonder how they had gotten there. Snakes of smoke formed about her hands and she struck at them with the power of fanged serpents.

The Vong warriors blocked with their amphistaffs, snakes against snakes. Then the Vong drew coufees and leaped into for a knife fight. Dije drew her lightsaber and activated it with a mechanical hiss like a snake of fire. Red light reflected off of the stalactites overhead.

Dije chopped through one of the Vong daggers, and then continued her strong right through the attacking warrior, cutting him into two lopsided pieces.

Kerruke, unarmed in the heart of the fortress, was locked in a hand to hand struggle with a tall, heavily muscled Vong warrior. Dije Force-leaped to the pair and lopped off his head. The fringe-mouthed head fell to the stone floor with a plop, followed by the body.

Kerruke nodded once and turned around. Dije did likewise and planted her back against Kerruke's. More Vong poured in through the tunnel to the back door.

Dije recalled what she had heard about Evlyn's fight, and summoned Force-lightning. She cast it at the invaders and made a wall of bodies at the tunnel mouth. But more of them kept coming.

Except for Dije and Kerruke, everyone in the command center went down one by one, to thud bugs, to coufees, to amphistaffs. Ziss Indarkos died there, and old members of Kerruke's crew, and the illusionist, and a gangly teen commoner serving as a runner.

The Vong pushed aside the bodies of their own dead and kept stepping through, killing and being killed until the cave floor was slippery with Vong blood.

Dije felt Kerruke die at her back. Kerruke's soul went first, tearing out Dije's heart. Then she felt the warmth of Kerruke's body drop away from her back, and her body fall to the floor. Kerruke's spirit did not rise up as Ojaste's had. Kerruke followed the Dark Side to the end. Her spirit sought a home, and twined into a jewel which had once been hers: the focusing crystal in Dije's lightsaber.

Weeping and frothing, Dije reached deep into herself and called the Dark Side as she had not done since the death of her daughter. The fortress trembled around her with her terrible wrath.

Then she saw Evlyn. Coming in behind the Vong invaders. Hands forward, in the classic pose of summoning Force-lightning.

The two Dark Ladies cast lightning at each other. It sizzled and crackled around the room until all the electronic gear in the command center was slagged. Then Dije felt Evlyn reach in the Force for her lightsaber, to take control of the power cell and blow it up.

Dije tried to wrest command of the power cell away from Evlyn, but discovered that Evlyn was stronger in the Force than she was. Instead Dije flung her lightsaber down the opposite corridor, back into the caves of the fortress. Once it was away from the fight, Evlyn dropped her struggle for control of the battery.

Dije attacked with snakes of illusion, and Evlyn countered with an amphistaff she picked up off the floor. The staff tried to turn on her, but she threw it away, and the snakes fought each other.

"Why, Evlyn?" asked Dije.

"Because it's the way of the Dark Side," replied Evlyn.

Dije sensed Kerruke's spirit approaching. Someone had picked up the lightsaber. Dije circled around, easily maneuvering the less combat-experienced Evlyn into putting her back to the adjoining chamber.

Suddenly Evlyn sensed the enraged pair behind her and whirled around, reaching for the lightsaber power pack with the Force.

Piekke threw the lightsaber at Evlyn, who knocked it away. With their mother's slayer distracted by Piekke's attack, and Dije's simultaneous attack with Force-lightning, Piker reached out to the Dark Side and did what he did best: he pulled off Evlyn's scarred skin like a cloak. Kerruke's twins skinned her alive.

Evlyn shrieked. She cast Force-lightning at the twins, who fell screaming and writhing before her.

Dije called her lightsaber to her and reignited it. The distinctive snap-hiss was lost in the shrill screams of skinless Evlyn and the two children.

All three screams stopped at once as Dije thrust her maroon blade through Evlyn's black heart. The skinned body fell to the cave floor with a wet splat.

Dije deactivated the lightsaber and clipped it to her belt. She sank down by the whimpering twins, and gathered them into her arms. "The Force is Life," she told them. "You have survived the lightning. I will call the tattooist."

Outside the wreckage of the fortress, Dije stood with the last remnants of her people in what had once been the village of Dije's original Territory. Between the commons, Fruitioners, Sith, and Jedi, there were a scant thousand left.

Grimly, Dije held up the skin, scars on one side, dried blood on the other. The newly tattooed twins stood by proudly, smirking. This was their initiation party, and also a celebration of the victory. But there was little cheer, as the Vong had come into the Sacred Lands without decontaminating, and had tracked in radiation with the dust of the wastelands. They had burned fields and farmsteads, and slaughtered the nerfs grazing in the meadows, as if they did not know the beasts were harmless herd animals.

Many of the dead nerfs were roasting in vast pits now, soon to be eaten by the celebrants. But even those who had already gotten drunk or high were in a subdued mood.

A man in the brown robes of the Fruitioners approached her. "My Lady, I am Gamlin the tanner, who made your boots. I offer my services to tan the hide of Evlyn the traitor, to be displayed in your castle."

Dije asks him, "You approve? A Fruitioner?"

"She brought death and poison to the Sacred Lands. Your war against the Vong is a holy war, Lady Dije. Vonglife is a pestilence."

Dije handed over the skin without another word.

Ni Smashlier, both Jedi and Sith, stood up on a tree stump and addressed the last of the people of Sith-ta. "All question of taking Territory must end. We must squash the ambitions of all future Lords or Ladies like Evlyn. Dije must claim rule of the whole planet."

Wearily, Dije summoned the Force-trick that projected her voice to the whole assemblage. "I agree. I claim all Sith-ta. This is not my Territory but my world."

Ni said, "Then you will be our Queen."

Dije glanced at him, a little startled. There had been no over-Lord among the Sith for a very long time. "You are right, Sir Ni. For Lords and Ladies to serve another Lady is an open invitation to strife, as Evlyn just proved. But they can serve a Queen. We will do this right. The way it was done in the ancient days. Find me a master smith. I will accept the Chain of Office."

This announcement brought murmurs from the crowd.

"Now enough of woe!" Dije cried. "This is a celebration of victory, and the initiation party of Piker and Piekke, children of fallen Kerruke, my closest advisor and dearest friend, and half siblings of my son. Let us have food and drink and music! Let the party begin!"

She wondered to hear her own words. There was a time—was she so old now she could not remember how long ago it was?—when she would have said, Let's smoke strobe and get into the neon. But that was in a city that was now a glowing glass hole in the ground.

War Leader Yaash watched the priests of Yun-Yuuzhan sacrifice the captured Jeedai and Sith. Although he had not succeeded in wiping out the enemy, he had still attained a great victory. From now on out it was only mopping up. Still, the gods must be appeased.

The war priests cut the throats of the captives, and their blood splashed into the pit. The souls of the Sith joined the other angry spirits who were unable to find a home aboard the living ship. The spirits of the Jedi stretched out to the universe, and became immortal in the Light.

The Queen ceremony began simply, with more facial tattoos. As the crownlike jags were placed on her forehead on either side of the Blackstar tattoo, Dije reflected that her Vong enemies would understand this ceremony perfectly. They too altered their flesh to symbolize rank. They too made endurance a test of worthiness.

To prepare for the next part of the Queening, Dije peeled her right arm out of her snakeskin bodysuit, and tucked the sleeve in her sword belt next to her lightsaber.

Kerruke's ghost spoke to her in the Force. Are you sure about this, My Lady?

"I'm sure, Kerruke. It's an important symbol. The people need this kind of leadership." If anyone overheard Dije speaking to the dead, they did not remark on it. Even those who could not feel the Force had seen enough evidence of its reality not to have any doubts.

She walked to the outbuilding on the farmstead. Some birds still sang in the trees; others lay dead all around, poisoned by the radiation let in by the battle. Crops lay withered in the fields—those that had not been burned off. Dije entered the heat of the building.

The Chain of Office: it was forged in a smithy, as representatives of the four major peoples of Sith-ta looked on. The Smith was a Fruitioner. Most of what he made went on the hooves of nerfs, not the hands of queens. But the black iron bent for him just the same.

Hammer tink tink tink the white hot metal glowing, the sparks flew.

First was the fingerless gauntlet, with a large jewel on the back of the hand. It was formed around her and forged on. Not welded: forged and hammered seamlessly, as she used the Force to keep her flesh from catching fire.

The chain was attached. It went up her arm, connected to arm-rings on her forearm and upper arm, keeping the chain from getting in the way of her sword-arm. The chain went to her torc, an articulated neck piece and half-breastplate which would protect her throat and heart. It too was forged onto her.

Dije used all her power and skill to keep from being disfigured by the Queening process, but she could not actually cool her skin without interfering with the forging. It still burned, and hurt so much that even with Jedi pain suppression techniques her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth set in a terrible grimace. Her breath came short.

Dije found herself slipping into subspace. The heat of the forge made sight waver above it, but now the whole room wavered, thinned, and folded away as a new dimension opened to her like a flower.

She thought she had known subspace before. She had wheeled with the spiral galaxies, but now, she felt the star-studs in the everlasting night as mere hairs on her skin. The true vastness lay beneath. Levels—geometries—impossible tessaracts—Dije did not see them but felt them, inside her, part of her, as she expanded to encompass the All. Dije was the Living Force, and the Light, and the Dream: she was the waking mind of Fala, in some strange dimension where time and space were afterthoughts.

At last the smith was finished. Dije cooled her skin. Raggedly, she announced, "This does not come off short of my death."

The representatives of the Sith, Jedi, Fruitioners, and commons went out and announced the completion of the ceremony, and four great huzzahs went up. Dije heard them, but felt disconnected from them. The Queen ceremony had changed her perceptions. She could still see into the crystalline substrate of the multiverse. She no longer had any fear in this war. Salvation was coming.

Time passed in a blur of fighting. Dije's court lived in the caves, and fought endless incursions into the Sacred Lands, and struck at the enemy whenever he was to be found. Dije promoted kasenth. But she took little joy now in dance and music.

Some Fruitioners came to her, and asked for her wisdom on whether they could join the fight against the Vong who had slaughtered their livestock and poisoned their trees and ponds.

Dije began making a speech to them, and all those present gathered around to listen, some even sitting down on the ground. For an instant she was reminded of Luke listening to her fable.

"The Vong exist in neither the Force nor the White Current. White Current illusions only affect them to the extent that they affect physical reality. They're not mental projections like Force illusions are. They are illusions that are more than illusions—as was said of the art of illusion long ago, lost no more.

Kill only that which is not alive. Kill only not-life and you do not kill life. Even Fruitioner illusionists can kill Vong, and Vonglife. It is less an act of violence than killing a borer larva in your grain field."

"What about the Peace Brigade? They're real people."

"Leave them to the Jedi, and the Sith."

The Fruitioner illusionist showed her the bug carcass. Whatever illusion he had slain it with, he had dismissed it, and the method of death was not apparent. The giant insect was intact.

"So, something else besides giant snakes burrowed into the Sacred Lands," said Queen Dije. The light of the Force-sun over the fields glittered off the jewel on her gauntlet like an aurora borealis.

"Space locusts," spat the farmer. "On top of everything else."

"No. This isn't a disaster. It's our salvation. Space locusts will eat anything living. The Vong pride themselves on using bio-everything. Amphistaffs, vonduun crab armor, yorik coral ships, communication villips, everything they have is alive. All we need to do is mark their signature Unlife as food in the limited minds of the space locusts."

Dije looked up into the sky. Somewhere up there was the Vong warship. "This is the weapon we've been waiting for."

Dije assembled the Sith, Jedi, and Illusionists in the speech-making and partying space in front of the natural cave mouth of the fortress. "Sith: your job is to confuse the Vong ship's sensors by hurling space debris at it. Jedi: your task is to mark the Vong warship and any coralskippers it may launch as food in the primitive minds of the space locusts. Illusionists: your mission is to mask the swarm until the last moment before the locusts attach to their prey. Blessings of Fala, and may the Force be with you."

Yaash Kwim was confident at first. So, the infidels were throwing rocks at his ship. They were easily destroyed, or sucked in by the dovin basals. Then the swarm appeared out of nowhere. He felt his ship tremble in anguish as the first locusts began munching away at its armor, and pierced into the veins beneath.

Yaash ordered the weapons officer to redirect his fire at the swarm.

The Vong killed most of the locusts by firing on them and by destroying swarms with dovin basals. But the locusts ate all the coraskippers launched against them. Then the swarm renewed its assault on the mothership.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

The space locusts ate their way onto the bridge, holing the ship. Atmosphere burst away. Yaash's strong body remained alive for a little while, while its cells burst and the air was sucked from its lungs. His eyes popped, but he retained sight long enough to see the locust coming for him, chewing its away across the floor, through the weapons officer's station, and through the weapons officer.

Yaash drew his coufee and sank the blade into the space locust, but the bug paid its minor injury no mind. It opened its great jaws. Crunch, crunch, crunch. That was the last of War Leader Yaash Kwim.

The only Vong left in Sith-ta local space were on the ground. The Queen's peoples charged them and fought them. They fought with the power of fanged serpents. They fought with guns, and with lightsabers. They fought with stones, and with locusts.

Then the Sith and Jedi and Illusionists finished off the Vong. Except that Dije spared the Redeemed Ones, for their traitorous service and their devotion to the Jeedai.

And then the space locusts went on their way.

Dije thought about having her Jedi direct the locusts to eat the ruins of the cities, to poison them with radiation and kill off the swarm for all time. But she forebore. Not because it would be wrong to kill innocent animals, and not because they had been of service to her, but because they were now a weapon in her arsenal, and she would not throw away a useful tool.

In the wider galaxy, it was several years yet before the Vong War was over. But on Sith-ta, it was time to pick up the pieces and forge a new civilization, in peace. Dije and some of the Sith remained in the save fortress. Dije brought her son Darth home. Sometimes he stayed with her, and sometimes with his Fruitioner tutors.

There were internal squabbles, but Dije's status as the Queen as her victory in the war prevented any further attempts to assassinate and replace her. For the moment.

The farmers sadly took stock of the Sacred Lands, and got the Sith and Jedi to begin the long process of decontamination from the final ground battle. The shields were reinforced under the ground at last, and the mutant snakes of the wastelands stopped getting in.

Dije established relations with the Corporate Sector. She greeted their embassy warmly, and when she was ready to sign a treaty, she met with Vice Chair of the CSA Senior Board Hart-and-Parn Gorra-Fiolla of Lorrd.

Dije declared all Sith involved in a manager level capacity with the interstellar slave trade to the outlaws from the Queen's Justice, as part of the treaty with the Corporate Sector Authority. Also outlawed: taking a mercenary contract to support an insurrection against the CSA. Those who were declared outlaws could be killed with impugnity, and outlaws were also hunted by the Queen's most feared courtiers, the infamous Twins, who delighted in skinning their victims alive.

Then came the hard work of rebuilding. And the hard questions, of how to rebuild a world that had shrunk to a bit of farmland too small and too polluted to support all the people living on it.

Many people urged Queen Dije to relegalize the slave trade, but she refused. Instead she encouraged the Sith to return to the stars as mercenaries.

Dije had to create a government. Decide to make laws. Forbid import of disposables? All except charity? Tax?

Those were the questions with which she was concerned on a daily basis, instead of the marshalling of troops. Sith-ta was at peace. The Queen's Peace. If the Force was with her, it would last through her lifetime. And what then? But that would be the task of the Legacy Children to decide.

The End


	3. Chapter 3

Third in the Queen of the Sith trilogy

The messenger stood before Queen Dije. Her throne room was still laid out like the command center it had been during the war, with computer equipment in the center and access walkways alongside. It would not have looked very imposing, if one was not Force-sensitive. But the walls were inhabited by the spirit of Ziss Indarkos, and the central column by the ghost of Evlyn the Traitor, on which Evlyn's own scarred, tanned hide was displayed.

The Queen's throne was a simple iron chair with a padded seat, made by the same smith who forged the Chain of Office. Clean lines of black metal with eight legs instead of four, suggesting a spider at the center of a web, where she waited for all things to come to her.

The sinister effect was only slightly spoiled by knowing the throne had not actually been made for the Queen at all, but as a prop for the smith's daughter's school play, after which it had been taken to the kasenth tunnel. That was a large natural cave inside the fortress where people brought things they no longer wanted but which were too good the throw away, a kind of communal attic and museum. In the spirit of kasenth, the Queen had selected her throne from her own peasants' secondhand goods.

"I have a job for the Twins," Dije announced. She handed the messenger a datapad. "This is a list of those who have been declared fugitives from the Queen's Justice. See it delivered to them on Msha."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

The messenger departed.

The Royal Illusionist leaned down to speak privately with the Queen. He had the expression of someone taking an awful risk.

"The people are beginning to wonder about those lists, Your Majesty. They're saying you're declaring outlaws for political reasons, to satisfy our treaty partners in the Corporate Sector, instead of putting down crime here at home."

"And they're right," Dije replied. Her tone was low and matter of fact. "The Twins are a weapon I wouldn't loose against common criminals. I'd rather not have anything to do with them at all, in fact. But what to do with people like them? I can't kill them, they're the children of Kerruke. Best to get them off planet doing something useful."

"Ah. Now I understand. Thank you for taking me into your confidence, Your Majesty."

"Thank you, for your honesty, Ordos. It's about time I had someone to talk to besides my sword."

When the messenger had gone, Dije picked up another data pad and tinkered with the speech she was about to make before sending off the next few messengers. One to the Corporate Sector, to arrange safe passage for a diplomatic ship. One to Coruscant, to arrange for an embassy, and begin treaty negotiations. And one, just for personal reasons, to her old Master.

"The galaxy must never have cause to re-Blockade us. We will be mercenaries, not conquerors. Sith-ta will be a paradise of peace. But it will take time and hard work to make our world livable again. Sith-ta is a blasted wasteland, except for the Sacred Lands. And even they are still not fully decontaminated from the final battle. There is a lot of work ahead of us, to restore the purity of the Land. And to secure our world from future invasion. But together, we will have peace and prosperity for our children. And I, and my court, will continue to work for good relations with other governments, so that the Blockade will never come again. We are traveling to Coruscant, to make a treaty with the Galactic Alliance. The Galactic Alliance is the union of the New Republic and the Imperial Remnant, and we have them to thank for the final defeat of the Vong."

Dije sighed. In truth it was more the Jedi than the Alliance to thank for stopping the Vong advance before it consumed the galaxy. The final battles may have been one by capital ships, but without the early entry of the Jedi into the war, when the New Republic was still supporting the Peace Brigade, the Vong would have swept through the galaxy unopposed and destroyed everything they found. But the statement in the speech was true enough, and far more politic. The GA was a potential threat, as well as a potential ally. Dije would never have bothered with a treaty with a government that did not border her own space except for the terror that the GA might decide to put the Blockade back up in Sith-ta's sky.

She set the data pad aside in distaste. Much as she wanted peace and safety for her people, sometimes she wished she could get it by cutting up an enemy with her lightsaber. Quick and satisfying. Straight-up good guys and bad guys.

Well. If the war had gone on any longer there would not have been much left of the good guys. She had lost nearly everyone. Ojaste had fallen in battle. Ziss and Kerruke had been struck down right in the throne room, lost to the traitor Evlyn. Ni and his Knights, and Dije's own mother had all gone in the cataclysmic final battle on the ground. But after they died, she had been able to bring home her son. She had made a safe world for him.

An apprentice in a brown robe and Padawan braid was waiting for Luke outside the training room. When had the New Order adopted the old Padawan braids? When had it adopted the title Padawan? For a moment, looking at the youngling, Luke had a sense of events slipping out of his grasp.

"Grand Master? There's someone here to see you. He says he's a Jedi. But his name isn't in the computer."

"Ah. You must be today's door warden. Well, do you think he is a Jedi?"

"He has a strong Force aura. He's wearing a lightsaber. But the computer's never heard of him."

"I guess I'll find out," Luke said. He went to the ostentatious lobby of the rebuilt Jedi Temple.

The man waiting for him was indeed wearing a lightsaber, and did have a strong Force aura. He was also dressed in a black snakeskin bodysuit. Luke paused to drop beneath the Force and look at him in the White Current, something he had not taught to any student but Dije. There was a glimmer of illusion about the man's face. Luke pierced it easily, and perceived a Sith tattoo on the messenger's forehead. This was an illusion Luke was meant to see through, and ONLY he was meant to see through. At once Luke thought the man might be a student of Dije's.

"Welcome," Luke said. "Come with me. We'll go somewhere we can speak privately." Luke led him out of the Temple and out into the public square at the base of the ziggurat. "How well do you know the lost art? Can you create a field where no one can hear us or see our lips moving?"

"Yes," said the messenger. The park rippled around them, and the illusion dropped into place.

"Good. That will foil common eavesdroppers. And distance will keep you from being discovered by Jedi minds. It was a great risk coming to see me here."

"I didn't know where else to look. Yavin 4 is deserted."

"Yes. Do you come from Dije?"

"I do."

"Why did she send a messenger in person?"

"We have no holocomm or hypercomm equipment left on Sith-ta. The Vong destroyed all technology except what was in the fortress. The caves did used to have a unit, but it was cannibalized for computer parts. And the Queen could not trust a commercial comm, its owner might read the message. And recordings can fall into the wrong hands."

"So could you."

"Yes, but of those few in the galaxy who could force my message from me, most serve either you or the Queen."

"What is the message?"

"Queen Dije has sent a messenger to open diplomatic relations with Coruscant. I am sent only to re-establish contact between you. She wishes friendship. She would prefer that your friendship move out of the shadows and become official good relations. The Queen desires a peace treaty with the Galactic Alliance. The support of the Jedi for a peace treaty would be greatly appreciated."

"I see." Luke considered. "How much do you know about our 'friendship in the shadows'?"

"All Sith-ta knows the Queen learned the Jedi arts from you. She was your bodyguard, paid in knowledge."

Luke nodded. So Dije had maintained that cover story right through the Vong war and all the years of recovery after, despite the fact that the government she had concocted that fiction to hide from had fallen in the first hours of the war. "And?"

The messenger looked puzzled. "And, the Queen wishes to resume your acquaintance, which the Vong so rudely interrupted. She wishes to meet with you openly and establish good relations with the Jedi."

Luke nodded again. There were doubtless Sith who knew he had been initiated aboard Sith Raider, but if this messenger was one of them, he was suitably discreet about it. "Tell her I accept."

Dije could not believe her eyes. Parked on the reclaimed desert that now served as Sith-ta's starport, its rosy paint peeling much worse than before, encrusted with additional (but far from new) weapons, was Sith Raider.

The Force had brought her out here today, to the decontamined zone outside the Sacred Lands. She very rarely got those urgent Force-promptings anymore, but when she did, she dropped everything to answer them. Today that meant leaving in the middle of a meeting about whether to establish an official police force, and Dije was just as glad to be out here instead.

Dije sensed only one living person aboard the decrepit pirate ship. The lock cycled, and Dai-Oni climbed wearily down to the packed earth landing zone. His hair had gone grey. But his eyes burned with a haunted madness.

As he approached, Dije felt a hand in her hand and glanced down. Darth had followed her out here. Dije smiled and squeezed his hand and waited for Dai-Oni to reach them.

Dai-Oni seemed to look through her at first, perhaps only seeing her in the Force. But then his eyes focused and he took in her additional tattoos and the Chain of Office, and her one- strap red and black dress, cut to reveal the Chain in its entire length, worn over scuffed black snakeskin boots. She wore her hair in Fallanassi braids with red ribbons and glittering red jewels worked in. She looked like a vision of the elder days, a fairytale empress from the Golden Age of the Sith.

Dai-Oni knelt before her. He did not bend his head but knelt straight-backed, warrior to queen. "Queen Dije," he said, as much acknowledging her status as addressing her.

"Rise, Dai-Oni."

He stood. "We heard of another world of Sith. We heard there was a resurgent Brotherhood of Darkness on Korriban. We went there. I only survived because as second in command it was my duty to stay with the ship when the Captain was away."

He paused for a long time, long in some terrible memory.

"Go on," Dije said quietly.

"They can combine their powers. As we do when we combine to create a suppression field, but they can do it with telekinesis. They just picked everybody up and smashed them. I escaped in Sith Raider. And came here. Because I meant to find another crew and then go back to base and continue the pirate's life. I don't know why my brother ever decided to go to Korriban at all, I wanted nothing to do with any of the spawn of Darth Bane. But on the way…" He trailed off again.

The wind soughed over the dunes. Finally he spoke again. "On the way here I felt something in the Force. One of those Force-promptings you told us about. I've never gotten one before, but it was unmistakable, from your description. I went far off the star charts. And I found the Great Machine."

Dai-Oni's eyes unfocused, and he stood still for a long time.

Dije said, "You are tired from your journey, Dai-Oni. Come to the caves and rest. Set your body at ease and your mind in order. Then we shall speak again."

Luke sat bolt upright in bed. The only light in the room came from the city lights of Coruscant outside the window.

Mara stirred beside him and rubbed her eyes. "Another nightmare? Was it the Man Who Doesn't Exist again?"

"No. I dreamt I was in a meeting."

"Oh, poor baby." Mara's tone changed from concerned to teasing.

"With Cal Omas, Admiral Niathal, and Admiral Pellaeon."

"Just like yesterday, then. Don't tell me: you showed up without any pants."

"I wish I could have normal nightmares like that. No, it was far worse. I was wearing Jacen's GAG uniform."

Mara erased the teasing from her voice. "Tell me."

Luke related his dream:

Luke: "You have my every confidence, Admiral Pellaeon. I can't think of anyone better suited to crush the rebellion."

Omas: "Master Skywalker!"

Luke: "Let's not mince words. That is what we're doing. We are the Empire now."

Omas: "Hardly. We are a democratically elected government."

Luke: "Chancellor Palpatine was elected by the Old Republic Senate. I'm not saying you're anything like him, Cal. You aren't. The rest of us are a little more believable in our roles. Admiral Pellaeon is still Admiral Pellaeon." The Admiral suddenly was wearing his old Imperial uniform. "Admiral Niathal is Governor Tarkin." Suddenly Niathal looked like Tarkin.

Niathal's gravelly Mon Calamari voice came from Tarkin: "I'm offended!"

Luke: "Don't be. Think who I just called myself." Luke was afraid to say it, afraid he'd look down and see the Suit appear on his body.

Niathal/Tarkin looked confused.

Pellaeon was a bit quicker on the uptake. "I knew your father, Luke. I assure you, you're a much less frightening man to work with."

"Thank you. But what keeps me up at night is the question, whose role does Jacen want to usurp: mine, or," points at Cal/Emperor, "Yours."

"That's the end of the dream," Luke said. "Now, I know you think I'm jumping to conclusions about Jacen, but I'm really worried."

"I know, Luke. But trust me on this. He's just having a bad affair. He'll get over it in time."

"Maybe. But I have an idea. You know Jacen despises me."

"That's a little strong."

"No, really. I'm thinking reverse psychology. I've already tested it. I told Jacen I think letting the Errant Venture go to the front lines was a really bad idea, and as soon as it could cross the starlanes, it was there, siphoning off money from the troops at the gambling tables and not incidentally putting Booster in a position to nose around and find out some interesting things."

"Yes. That was very clever," Mara's voice smiled in the darkness. "But what sort of reverse psychology could bring him off the dark path, if he's on it, which I doubt?"

"I'm going to tell him I'm a Sith."

Mara spluttered, snorted, barked a laugh—then went deadly still. "You're serious."

"More than you know." Luke reached out with the Force and pressed the button on the room lights. "This is something I've been working up to tell you for a long time. I have to tell you first. Before anyone else. You see, I received a messenger a few days ago. A Sith messenger."

"Oh, I get it," Mara said. "I heard the Queen of the Sith has sent an ambassador to Coruscant to begin treaty negotiations. It's been all over the news. They're saying if things go well she'll come here in person, eventually. Maybe by next year."

"Yes."

"Quick work, if you're going to persuade Jacen this ambassador turned you."

"No. Mara, when I tell Jacen that the Queen herself initiated me as a Sith, it will be the truth."

Mara instinctively opened herself to the Force to gauge whether she was hearing the truth. "Neat trick, Luke. I can't tell you're lying."

"That's because I'm not."

Mara paused only a few seconds. "What?"

"Queen Dije was once my apprentice. Long ago she returned to her own people. But before that, she initiated me. That's my secret, Mara. I've been a Sith longer than you've been a Jedi."

"I don't believe it. I would know if you fell."

Luke shook his head. "In their tradition, once you've been initiated, it's for life. Whatever decisions you might make after that, whatever path you might follow. I can spend the rest of my life in the Light Side and I will still be a Sith. That's the way it works."

Mara hissed. She sounded as if she had been about to say the curse word 'Sithspit' and then thought better of it.

"There's more," Luke said. He turned away and rubbed his eyes. "Queen Dije has a son. She didn't say his name. She just called him the prince. Darth, in their language." Luke made himself look up and meet Mara's eyes. "And he's my son."

"You didn't know."

"Not until the messenger told me."

Mara got up and paced back and forth.

"Understand, Mara," Luke said. "When you and I were together in the Chiss fortress, when you told me I was using too much power and risked turning to the Dark Side, it was barely a few weeks after my initiation. You were right, I knew it, and you helped me back onto the path of Light. And I've done my best to stay there ever since. With your help. If you hadn't been there in the crucial moment, to bring me back to the good path, by now I'm sure the whole galaxy would know that I'm a Sith."

"That's not the whole secret, is it?" Mara asked. "There's still something you're holding back."

"There is. I'm not ready for that yet."

Mara slipped back into the sheets. "Alright, Luke. When you're ready to tell me, I'll be here to hear you."

Dai-Oni parked Sith Raider on the cold, windswept plateau at the base of the mountain. The Bright Squad exited first, and took up defensive positions around the ship, even though Dai-Oni had assured the Queen that the world was deserted. The Queen's safety was not to be compromised.

When Dije walked off the ship into the chilling wet air, she had to admit the place looked threatening. The whole world was grey: grey stone and lowering grey clouds. The entrance to the Great Machine was carved into the cliff face like a giant head, mouth agape, ready to swallow anyone foolish enough to venture inside.

The Queen, Dai-Oni, Ordos the Royal Illusionist, and a team of four Sith Royal Guard in black snakeskin crossed the plateau and entered the dripping cave just as natural lightning flashed outside and the cold rain came down. The Bright Squad stayed out in it, some around the ship, some around the cave mouth. Though the Bright Squads were all Jedi, they knew Sith techniques too, and generated personal Force fields to keep the rain off of them.

Ordos produced a ball of light, and the explorers went into the tunnel.

"There's some terrible history about this world," Dije commented.

"I don't feel anything," Dai-Oni said.

"Neither do I, but there must be something, to explain why a water-rich world with an oxygen atmosphere has no plants growing anywhere."

From inside the focusing crystal of Dije's lightsaber, Kerruke commented, "Well there aren't any ghosts around. Kinda lonely around here for my kind."

Dije patted the saber in reassurance, the way she would pat Darth's shoulder when he felt isolated from the other children. Which was often enough to make Dije worry, but there was no help for it. He had been protected from the horrors of war by spending most of his early years with a Fruitioner family, but as a result he had not had much to do with other Sith until he had already acquired Fruitioner ways and a Fruitioner mindset. That was all to the good, in Dije's opinion. He was a sweet boy. His extreme natural power kept him protected from bullies, and from adult plotters. But it also set him apart. Fruitioner ways, more Force talent than anyone else on Sith-ta, and the son of the Queen: a recipe for loneliness that was only made worse by his genius with music.

A new thought occurred to Dije as she followed Dai-Oni down the passageway: her boy needed a father. Not just any father; he needed his real father. Dije dismissed the thought. She was on a deserted alien planet, brought here by a Sith pirate who had once tried to murder Ojaste. Even if the Great Machine turned out to be harmless, she had to keep her mind on what she was doing.

Finally they reached door. Dai-Oni reached out with the Force and flipped a switch inside the wall, and the door shished up into the ceiling. "It's designed so only Force-users can get in" Dai-Oni explained. They entered a round room, like a bubble in the stone. There was a metal platform in the center.

"This is it," said Dai-Oni.

"It doesn't look like much of a machine to me," said Dije.

"I think the actual mechanism is below us, in the planet core. I think the whole planet is the Great Machine, underneath."

"I don't see any control interfaces. How does it work?"

"You step up onto the platform. I couldn't make it work for me. It wouldn't even tell me what it does. It seems to have at least two levels of tests. First it asks you a question, to be sure you're a Sith. Then it asks you what you want. I must have failed that one, because it went dark, and wouldn't talk to me again."

"Alright. Let's find out what it can do." Dije reached out to both the Force and the White Current, and did not sense any danger. She stepped up onto the platform.

A spotlight came on, illuminating Dije and the platform. A voice spoke. The language was alien, the sounds meant to be produced by an alien mouth, but somehow Dije knew what it said. Somehow, the Machine spoke in her mind. "What is the first lesson and the last?"

"The Force is Life," said Dije.

"Welcome, Sith. What do you want?"

"I want my people safe and free and prosperous. I want the Blockade never to return. I want lasting peace on Sith-ta. I want the Sith to rise again."

"That is the future. That is yours to effect. Mine is the past." The light went out.

Dije stepped off the platform. "Mine is the past," she whispered. "It's a time machine. It can change the past."

"It can't be," said Ordos. "Queen Dije, I know I'm not a Force-user, but I've certainly been around enough of them to know the theories. A Sith can flow-walk into the past, and perhaps change minor things that do not affect fate. But if you try to change something important, the Force itself corrects it. Isn't that right?"

"It is," said Dije. "But not all things that do not affect fate are minor to the people who want to change them. Still, I wouldn't try it. It's too dangerous. This is an alien artifact, and very ancient. And if I don't miss my guess, Kerruke is wrong: there is one Force-ghost here. The ghost in the Machine."

Kerruke stirred inside the black garnet, like a nashta circling to make itself a comfortable bed in the grass. She settled down without comment.

"Alien, ancient, and Sith," said Ordos. "You mean this was made by the First Sith?"

"Perhaps," said Dije. "And perhaps now we know what happened to them all. Why they suddenly died out of the universe. They did something to the fabric of time, and accidentally wiped out all life on this planet."

They stood in the cold, wet cave for a long time, thinking. Finally Dije said, "We've learned what it's for. If the Force brought you here, Dai-Oni, it must mean someone is supposed to use the Great Machine. But I don't know who, or to do what. Perhaps we're only meant to make a record of it, so that in some future time the one who needs to use it will find out through us. In any case, the Great Machine is a power I want nothing to do with. I will not alter time."

The room was bland, just an anonymous metal room. It could have been on any number of space stations or underground mining colonies. In fact, it was on Coruscant, down in the lower levels where there had already been centuries of deterioration before the failed Vongforming of the planet, and the rebuilding had passed it by. The room's only purpose was to hold up the levels above it. But it did make a good meeting place for those who did not wish to be overheard.

That was undoubtedly why Jacen had come here. Luke waited until the robed alien with whom Jacen had been speaking left the building. Then he dismissed his illusion of invisibility and entered the room from a connecting corridor.

"Jacen. The time has come for you to resume your study of other ways of using the Force. I've been expecting you to realize you've left out one of the major schools of thought. I don't know if I'm talking to you about this in time. I'm very much afraid you may have already found a new teacher, one from the debased tradition of one and one. If so, I hope you'll see that you would receive far better instruction if you go to the source, to the true tradition."

"What are you talking about, Uncle Luke?"

"Lumiya isn't a real Dark Lady of the Sith. She's just a failed candidate. But Queen Dije Kun is. She's the greatest Sith teacher since the Golden Age."

"The Sith?"

"Of course, the Sith. Your study of the major paths of the Force is incomplete without the Sith teachings."

"I can't believe what I'm hearing."

"You don't have to pretend anymore, Jacen. I know Lumiya's apprentice is highly placed in the Galactic Alliance Guard. Too highly placed for it to be Ben, so it must be you. There are no other powerful Force users there. And I don't have to pretend anymore either. For years, I've been wondering how to broach this subject. But I can see now that you're ready and past ready for the way of the Sith. You don't have to tag along after one of your grandfather's castoffs. You will go to Sith-ta. There you will learn from Dije Kun, the Dark Lady who initiated me. If what you want is to become a Sith, you may do so with my blessing, and take Ben with you."

"And if I refuse, you take Ben back? He'll hate you."

"Good. That will make him powerful."

"My work with the GAG is too important to go haring off past the Outer Rim all the way to the hind end of Corporate Space to learn new ways to contemplate my navel."

"The Sith have more to teach than meditation, trust me on that. I've been a Sith longer than you've been a Jedi."

"I don't believe you. You're the most hidebound old-style Jedi in the Order."

"I am the link between the old and the new. The vehicle of the prophecy, the hard middle step between the Chosen One and the fulfillment of his destiny, in you. Don't you see that you've already gone so far on the road of bringing Balance to the Force, that it will take only one more step to complete it? You must become a Sith Lord."

"The Chosen One?"

"You brought the Balance Way to the Jedi Order. I told everyone to adopt it, but it was you who found it. The prophecy has almost completely been fulfilled. It will take only this one last thing. You must complete the set, learn the last path. Then the prophecy will be complete. The Old Order of the Jedi was hidebound, as you say, and unable to change. The Chosen One swept the Old Order away, so that the New Order could rise. You are the last link that chain. Go to Sith-ta. The Queen would receive you on your own merits, I'm sure, since she loves nothing better than a strong apprentice. But if you bring Ben with you, you'll arrive with the half brother of her son. And if there is one thing in this galaxy that I am certain of, it's that the Sith love their children. Your grandfather was true to the Sith way to the end."

"The half—" Jacen looked boggled for an instant. Then he straightened his back and stated, "I can't leave now. What I'm doing with the GAG has to be done. It's what's best for the galaxy."

That was when a third person walked in, from the other door. Someone who had been damping down her Force presence to remain undetected, a trick Jacen himself used often. The hood of her robe fell away, revealing her once beautiful face, now puffy and lined. She had a lightsaber hilt in her hand.

"Leia! What are you doing here?"

"Funny, I thought I came here to stop Jacen."

"How much did you hear?"

Leia ignited her lightsaber.

"Aw, now what do you think you're going to do with that?" Luke whined.

"I didn't spend my life creating the New Republic and then the Galactic Alliance to see it turn into the Empire. Or to see my son turn into the Emperor. That's why I came here. But now I see where the real danger lies."

Luke glanced between Leia and Jacen. If he continued the charade, Leia would believe Luke had turned to the Dark Side. He might end up having to fight her. But he was certain he could escape from her without hurting her. On the other hand, if he let go of the reverse psychology scenario, his last chance to save Jacen from the Dark Side would slip away. Luke knew what he had to do.

Luke extended his artificial hand toward Leia. "Join me. Together we will end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy."

Leia just stared at him. She knew full well whom Luke was quoting.

Jacen interposed, "Mom, you can't be here. You're wanted. I can't just quash the warrant, it would be favoritism. I know if you were brought to trial you would be found innocent, but…"

"But you don't bring people to trial," Leia snapped. "You herd them into camps, you torture people. I heard about Boba Fett's daughter."

"Leia, put that away," Luke said.

A frozen moment.

"Jacen, run," Luke commanded.

"But…"

"I can take care of myself. I can count on this hand—" he held up his replacement hand—" the number of people who can take me with a lightsaber, and Leia isn't one of them."

"No, I'm not," Leia agreed. She turned off her saber. "This isn't over." She walked away, rethinking everything.

Leia Luke reached out to her in the Force, hoping to reassure her.

She wheeled. "Stay out of my mind! I can't believe you tried that!" She ran.

Luke saw that Jacen was no longer there either. Only time would tell if Jacen would break free of Lumiya. But now Luke had another problem.

The GA bureaucrat was trying to stage-manage him. "You'll be standing here, with the Jedi, and the Queen's party will be standing over there. Now, no one expects you to actually shake hands, but when you two meet, in this spot here above the GA seal," the state department man pointed to the floor, "the photographers will be over there, so if you two could turn toward them and smile, and try to look amicable, that would be good. The Queen insisted on meeting with the Grand Master of the Jedi as part of the treaty process. She says the treaty will mean nothing if the Jedi don't promise peace with the Sith as well. Now, you won't need to make a speech, but it's important to greet her properly. She will say, I greet you in peace, Grand Master Skywalker, and you will say--"

Luke cut him off. "No titles. If she calls me by my proper title, I'll have to call her by her proper title." He addressed the golden droid beside him. "Isn't that right, Threepio?"

"Of course, sir. Protocol demands that—"

Luke continued, "And I'd cause a scandal if I called her Darthe-nir in public."

"Master Luke, sir, the title Darthe-nir is only used by Sith, to address the Lady who performed their Sith initiation."

"I know," Luke said.

"Oh," replied the droid.

The bureaucrat looked like he'd eaten something that didn't agree with him. But the shock did shut him up.

Luke berated himself for saying that. He had kept the secret all these years, and now he just let it slip out to some total stranger, just because he was annoying? Luke sighed, reached out in the Force to the state department man, and erased the last five minutes of his life from his mind.

The man blinked stupidly, and then began where he thought he had just left off. "You'll be standing over there…"

Of all the things Luke imagined he might say to Dije when he finally saw her again, he never imagined what actually popped out. "What are you wearing?"

"It's called the Chain of Office. It symbolizes my service to my people."

"You look like one of Jabba the Hutt's slave girls."

One of the Sith stepped forward with a wrathful expression.

"Dai-Oni, no! It's alright. His sister was once one of Jabba's slave girls."

Dai-Oni stepped back among the other tattooed, black-clad figures behind the Queen. There were also brown-robed Fruitioners, and Bright Squad Jedi in clashing neon colors, some normal humans, and a group of tall beings with both tattoos and other body mutilations.

Dije and Luke got the formalities out of the way, and moved off of the seal, turning their backs to the holocam operators.

"Tell me about this Lumiya I keep hearing about," said Dije.

Luke filled her in. He had the impression that Dije was not so much interested in Lumiya as trying to avoid the important topics while they were in public.

Dije summarized what Luke had told her, making the concepts her own. "Lumiya. Failed candidate to a non-master of the debased tradition of one and one. She has no right to call herself a Dark Lady. Even worse, she claims to have the art of illusion, but they are only Force illusions, mental projections. They are not the illusions of the White Current, which have reality of their own. The Sith will deal with the impostor. We can't have our brand name cheapened by knockoffs, after all." Dije turned to the Sith, "I hereby declare Lumiya an outlaw from the Queen's Justice. The one who brings me her head will be given title and lands."

As if the giving of a decision was the signal to break up and party, Dije's group started to walk around, and some of the Fruitioners and Bright Squad members approached the Jedi.

Luke looked at the skull faced members of Dije's party. "Is that a Vong?"

"They are Redeemed Ones. They worship the Jedi. They would very much like to meet you."

"Oh. Alright."

"And they are hoping they can move their whole colony to Zonama Sekot. And the rest of Sith-ta is hoping that too. We want to finish eradicating all invasive alien Vonglife from the soil, air, and water."

"I think that could be arranged."

After the formal gathering, Luke returned to the apartment he shared with Mara. Mara had not been at the meeting. Luke had asked her not to come, because of the potential awkwardness of the situation. So she was at the Jedi temple, probably attacking some of the Council paperwork, or maybe working out in the practice room.

"Leia should have been there," Luke said to empty air. "She's the peacemaker of the family."

Luke looked back on the last civil conversation he had had with Leia and Han, before the GA – Corellian civil war had divided them. It had been about the Chosen One, of all things. Leia had not spoken, just sat and fumed. It was a subject guaranteed to get her riled.

Luke had said, "He was twisted by being a slave. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be owned."

Han had replied, "Why don't you ask Threepio?"

"That's not the same thing."

"From a certain point of view, kid."

Luke glanced over at Threepio, who was uncharacteristically silent only because Luke had shut him off because he wanted to think. Among all the other questions he was concerned with, the topic of droids' rights did not seem to be very important at that moment. But he still felt a twinge of guilt when he looked at the unmoving droid.

Well. It was time to eat. There was going to be a reception that evening for the Queen, and Luke was invited. Perhaps they would have a chance to talk away from the newspeople.

The reception was held in one of Coruscant's resurgent formal gardens, on a roof high above the city. A magnificent red sunset bathed the garden in a rosy glow. The two of them managed to get away from the others to talk.

"You married Mara Jade?" Dije laughed. "I might have known. The Emperor sends a Sith assassin after you—and you marry her. That's you all over."

"She wasn't actually a Sith, exactly. In the only-two tradition, the Emperor could have only one apprentice at a time. She was only a candidate."

"A rival to Darth Vader."

"That follows. She would have expected to take his place, if he'd died. Until the Emperor found a more exciting candidate."

"You."

"Yes."

"How she must have hated you."

"That's all sand in the wind now. She gave up hatred to become a Jedi."

"That's your favorite hobby."

They came to a place where a side path was unlit. "Walk with me down the dark path, Luke."

Luke rolled his eyes. "Will you ever get tired of doing that?"

"Never."

"It would probably alarm our followers if we started having one of our philosophical discussions, the way we used to do."

Dije laughed. "Over crossed blades? I think if we decide to spar we had better not do it out in the open, and without warning our respective security first."

"Come to the Temple, then."

"Ah, yes, the rebuilt Jedi Temple. I heard about that. I'd love to see it."

"Then come. You have as much right to be there as any other Jedi Master."

"I will."

Dije toured the Temple. She sensed the Dark Side power. Unbeknownst to her, it was the same one that Jacen had connected to after he got away from the Vong. Dije asked about the dark Force presence in the Temple, and Luke told her about he killed Lord Nyax in this spot in the middle of the Vong invasion of Coruscant.

The Jedi they passed in the hallways gave them sidelong glances, but no one dared criticize the Grand Master.

Luke and Dije's tour fetched up in the practice room. They prepared to spar. "You're going to wear that to spar in?" Luke asked.

Dije had already changed out of her formal gown and into practical snakeskin, so she knew Luke was talking about the Chain. "This does not come off short of my death," Dije said. Ritual words: but also an explanation.

"Just one rule," Luke said. "Promise not to blow up my hand. Or my lightsaber. Oh, or YOURS. That would make a dandy grenade."

"And what advantage will you give up?"

"None. I'm getting old. I need all the help I can get."

Dije smiled. "Getting old, are you? Can only backflip about ten feet in the air instead of twenty?"

"Yes, old. Hey, I'm not even the galaxy's best pilot anymore. Only second."

"Oh? Second to whom?"

"Jaina."

Dije laughed. "Alright. En garde, Jedi."

They ignited their lightsabers. Luke's was green like spring light in the trees of Yavin 4. Dije's was a deep red like the blood of the Sith.

"No joke. Really. We raced. A space obstacle course out in one of the smuggling systems that Han knew about."

Their lightsabers clashed together.

"You're lying. Sort of, anyway. I know a half truth when I hear it."

"Oh, alright. I got distracted during my run, just your ordinary saving the day type emergency, you know. But she really did win."

They circled, probing each other's defenses, with the sabers, and with their minds. Dije asked, "You're still projecting thoughts about Lumiya, you know. What's the real story behind that?"

Luke opened up to her about his concern for who is Lumiya's apprentice, Jacen or Ben. "I'm hoping it's Jacen. Because whichever one of them it is, I'm going to try to save him. But if I can't, then I'll have to stop him."

"Of course."

"I can't let go of the investigation, but I can't be objective about it either. And I should be. Back when you were at the Academy, I had not yet rediscovered the Jedi teaching that a Jedi should free himself of attachment. But I've discovered many things since then. Some from records about the old order, some of living memory of people who knew Old Order Jedi. Some things I've discovered new, and some the other members of the New Order have discovered. Jacen, especially, in the early years, before the Vong. Before Vergere, and Lumiya. To free oneself of attachment was a directive of the Old Order."

"You can't possibly mean you're trying to free yourself of attachment to Ben? What kind of monster are you trying to make of yourself? You once believed the love of a father for his son is what turned Darth Vader back into Anakin Skywalker."

"I was young and naïve then."

Their fight intensified. They leaped, thrust, pivoted. They tossed parts of the practice room at each other with the Force, pushed at each other, tried to trip each other.

"Luke. I never collected my Month of Service."

"You can't be serious."

"I am. For the next month, be the Luke who loved his father. The Luke who bet his life his father loved him back. Let yourself love your son. After that, if you want to go back, I have no claim on you. But I think you'll find you like the self you used to be."

They fought at full speed and strength now. They were starting to sweat, and their limbs were light with the exhilaration of combat.

"I can't, Dije. I can't let myself. Not while I'm not sure which one of them it is."

"Then you've become a worse monster than Vader."

"He wasn't a monster. He was a pathetic cripple on life support."

Dije cast an illusion of Vader's shadow coming from Luke. Luke faltered.

"Then why are you still haunted by the shape of his shadow?"

Dije took advantage of the distraction to press her attack, and got past his guard. Dije's lightsaber nearly made it to Luke's neck before he Force-pushed her hand away. Then he went on the offensive, driving her back toward the low gravity area.

"Besides, Luke, I thought you told me you knew it was Jacen. That's why you tried to send him to Sith-ta."

"I blinded myself to the possibility that it might be Ben, because I didn't want to face it. That is why attachment is dangerous. The Old Order of the Jedi knew it, and the New Order knows it now too. It's an integral part of the Balance Way."

Dije entered the low gravity patch. It did not throw her off balance as Luke had planned. Instead, she leaped up to an overhanging girder. Luke leaped after her, and they continued their fight balancing on the beam.

"Come back to the service of Life, Skywalker."

"What?"

Their blades crashed together again and again, cut, block, thrust, parry, riposte.

"This Balance Way you've adopted, that all your followers have adopted. It came to you from Jacen. And he learned it from Vergere. And Vergere was a student of Darth Plagus, Palpatine's Master. It is the debased tradition of one and one. Come back to the light."

"The Force has always required Balance. The Old Order knew they needed it and didn't have it. Through Jacen, I learned of the Balance Way. Now I'm fulfilling the prophesy of the one who will bring balance."

"Wasn't that Anakin Skywalker?"

"It was. It took three generations to manifest."

"So you approve of what he did? The Jedi purges?"

"It had to be. The old Jedi order was hidebound, and unable to change. It had to be swept away so that the new order could rise. It was his destiny, and mine."

Luke kicked Dije off the beam. She floated to the floor, and he jumped after her, diving facedown with his blade pointed at her head. She leaped out of the way, and Luke landed on one hand, and sprang back to fighting position.

"And did the fall of the new order have to be?"

"We have not fallen, but balanced. But yes, it had to be. You brought the light to the Sith. You changed the balance in the Force. I had to restore that balance."

"By joining the Dark Side?"

"The Force is unified. The dark side and the light have always been joined, like the day and night sides of a planet, forever turning."

Luke changed from the Force to the White Current and disappeared, dodging around Dije to attack from behind. She dispelled the illusion easily, pirouetting into the attack and out again.

"I still mean to collect my Month of Service. Let me know when you're ready. And then I'll sign the treaty."

Luke reached out in the Force to the practice room controls, and sent a blast of steam gouting out of the floor under Dije. She jumped aside, up onto a square rising from the floor. But Luke anticipated the move and got there first. He grabbed her by her braids and pulled her off the square, and his blade went to her neck.

"Good fight," Dije said. She deactivated her lightsaber.

Luke let her go and deactivated his green blade.

"I would have won a real fight, you know," Dije said. "Hand grenade."

"Only if you're willing to actually do that," Luke said. "We've been in a real fight once, Dije. You didn't blow me up then either."

For a moment they just stood staring and puffing with exertion.

"This is awkward," Luke said. "I shouldn't have said anything."

"It was a long time ago, Luke," Dije said. "Show me out?"

"Of course."

Luke went home after the match. The apartment in the former Imperial Palace was mostly decorated to Mara's tastes, which meant the displays on the walls were not art but her weapons collection.

"Getting sweaty with the Queen of the Sith, were you?" Mara teased. "Go take a shower. You're supposed to act like a farmboy, not smell like one."

Mara expected him to engage in some suitable banter, but he didn't say a word as he went to the fresher station and tossed his clothes out into the bedroom, missing the laundry hamper. How Luke could be a master of telekinesis and not be able to get his dirty workout duds within a meter of the basket was beyond her. But she suppressed her familiar irritation, because something was clearly wrong. Something more than the usual worries about the state of the galaxy, his students, family, and enemies, that is.

When he emerged from his shower Mara was waiting for him, looking quite humorless. "You really look like you're about to pounce on someone, Mara. Hope you haven't decided to try to complete your final mission after all."

"That's more like it," Mara said, easing her expression a bit. "Luke, what's wrong?"

"I've just been the recipient of a come-back-to-the-light speech."

Mara raised her eyebrows. "This has got to be good. Do tell."

"From Dije Kun."

"That doesn't sound too good, Luke. When the Sith think you've gone too dark for their liking. What brought this on?"

Luke paused for thought by pulling on his Jedi robe.

"Dije's apprenticeship was during the early years of the Academy. Everybody's changed since then. The Jedi Order itself has changed a lot since then. And she's been out of touch behind the Blockade. She just reminded me of the way I used to be. I've been so sure I was right about all the changes I've made to the Order. And even those Jedi who didn't agree with me went along with them, because of who I am. Except for when I decided members of the Order must have no other work, and we did loose a few members then. I miss each and every one of them, too. I keep hoping people like, say, Ongreya will come back. But then Dije shows up, and she isn't about to say, I don't agree with you but I'll go along because you're the Grand Master, like everybody else does. She's a head of state, and her planet has been going it alone, against the Vong, and during the rebuilding afterwords. She thinks the Balance Way is another name for joining the Dark Side. And I'm starting to wonder if she's right."

"I know the Dark Side, Luke. Trained by Palpatine, remember? I'd notice."

"Not all evil cackles and has glowing yellow eyes."

"True. But evil doesn't trouble itself wondering if it's evil."

"Maybe not. But I'm not sure about your not noticing. You don't seem to think anything's wrong with Jacen, either."

"Aside from his unfortunate fashion choices."

Luke shrugged. "That's the least worrying part, to me. I used to run around in a black cape myself when I was younger, and Vader was still alive then."

"He's been good for Ben. Ben's much less surly, he's opened up to the Force and is well on his way to becoming a Jedi, he's even become obedient."

"Too obedient to Jacen. I still can't believe anyone, even a teenager, with half a brain would try to enforce that stupid arrest order on someone making vital repairs on the ship he was on himself, never mind that it was his uncle Han."

"Enough! We've been over and over that. We decided to let Ben stay with Jacen. It wouldn't be fair to Ben to change our minds when he's done everything we asked."

"I know," Luke sighed.

Dije's negotiations with the Coruscant government went well at first. The Redeemed Ones all shipped out for Zonama Sekot early on. But then there was a change in government, and Dije got the feeling something was up. The negotiations bogged down. Not in a way that implied the Sith weren't important to the new government, but in a way that suggested they were a threat unlike a mere military power, or even a shadow of evil out of old tales.

But finally Dije got to meet with one half of the new duumvirate: Colonel Jacen Solo.

When he entered the room the entire Bright Squad drew and activated their lightsabers as one. Dije had her hand on her saber as well, though she did not detach it from her belt. The Sith started mumbling to themselves, calling power. Even Ordos, who was a Fruitioner and thus a pacifist, extended his hands as if ready to summon the power of fanged serpents.

Jacen froze uncertainly. Beside him, his two Galactic Alliance Guard bodyguards drew their blasters.

"Hold!" Dije ordered. No one moved. "Jacen? If that's you, reveal yourself."

"What do you mean?" Jacen asked.

"Show yourself in the Force. You feel like a Vong."

"Oh!" Jacen waved and blipped into reality in Dije's Force-senses. "There. Better?"

The Bright Squad Jedi turned off their weapons, and the Sith and Ordos relaxed. A beat later the two GAG men holstered their blasters.

Dije nodded. "That's better. It would not be a good omen for our treaty if the first thing the two heads of state did on meeting each other is slaughter each other's guards."

"Very true," Jacen agreed. "Shall we move to the conference table?"

Dije nodded and sat down at the table, a large orowood creation. Jacen took a seat opposite. No one else sat down. This was just a preliminary meeting, and the agenda was short: agree in principle for their underlings to continue negotiations. It was more for the sake of form than anything else, although Dije had her own agenda.

She quickly, if unintentionally, derailed things by remarking, "It's been a long time."

Jacen just blinked at her. "Since what?"

"You don't remember me? You were just a little kid, of course, but I would think the tattoos would be recognizable, if nothing else. Of course, I have more of them now."

Jacen shook his head. "Sorry, I've met so many people, many of them aliens, and so much more distinctive even than a tattooed Sith. Were you an acquaintance of my parents?"

"No, of your brother. I'd dearly love to see Anakin again. How is he?"

Jacen's face went hard. "Dead. In the war."

"Anakin's dead?" Dije wailed. So many people had died in the Vong war, she was not really surprised. But she had not thought about people off world dying in the war. Somehow only the battles on the ground had seemed real to her. This fresh loss tore at the raw place within where she still grieved for her people. Dije felt tears starting to form in her eyes and put her head down on the table and covered it with her arms to save herself the embarrassment of weeping in public.

Jacen let her compose herself, wipe her tears, and sit up before he spoke. "I take it you knew him well."

Dije wiped her hands on her dress. When she realized she had gotten wet, salty tears on the palm of her gauntlet, she automatically thought the first thing she had to do when she got back to the hotel was oil the Chain. It was black cast iron, sturdy but vulnerable to rust if not cared for.

Dije silenty played a few bars of music in her head to steady her emotions. "Yes. But I see there is no recapturing the happiness of the past. We must look to the future. And that is why we are here. To secure the future."

"Yes, the treaty," said Jacen. "This meeting has already taken more than one unexpected turn. Shall we schedule another meeting, in say, a month? That will give our teams time to adjust to the changing circumstances in the GA."

"Yes, of course," Dije agreed, her voice still a little rough with emotion.

At that moment, other people were also discussing the proposed treaty between the Galactic Alliance and Sith-ta. The Masters Council convened in the Jedi Temple, and Luke tried to reassure the Council about Dije.

"There are some things the Council needs to know. You all know Dije was once my apprentice. What you don't know is that she is a Jedi Master. I gave her the title in secret to protect her, since at the time, openly living as a Jedi on Sith-ta would have been politically dangerous, possibly lethal. That is no longer the case.

"Also, there are some rumors about her that I would like to address. I can reassure you all there is no truth whatsoever in the rumor that she is a cannibal. The rumors about her being a slaver are a complete distortion. The rumor that she is a serial killer is only true from a perspective that would make me one, too."

"What about the rumor that she's a mind-raper?"

"That's a good translation of Jedi Mind Trick into the Sith language."

"I heard she claims her kid is descended from the Chosen One."

"That is, that is true," Luke stammered. He tried to use the Force to keep himself from blushing, with only modest success. He had not anticipated having to deal with that subject in here, today. Although he was planning to deal with it tomorrow, elsewhere.

"He could hardly be a child anymore, if he was from the time of the kidnapping," Kyp objected.

"Actually, he's 12. She froze--"

Mara yelled, "Wait, 12? This kid is younger than Ben?" Mara stood up and strode over. "Luke—while we were married?!"

"She froze him for later. Let's not fight in public."

"Do I look like I'm fighting? If I were fighting, I'd be doing this!" Mara swept out her saber and snapped it on, roundhousing. It was an attack any first-year Padawan could have blocked.

Luke just sat there. Mara choked back on her stroke when she realized he was not moving. A light hiss sounded and she shut it off. "Stang, Luke, you were supposed to duck!"

Luke blinked at her for a moment. "Ow. Anybody got an ice cube?"

"Oh no." Mara stared in horror at the lightsaber burn on Luke's neck. "I'm sorry."

"She froze him for later," Luke said in a glacially calm tone. "She wasn't ready to be a mother back then, so she froze him."

"You could have just said so."

"I had to defuse the unexploded Mara first."

"What, by letting me nearly take your head off?"

"Seeing me hurt made you realize how much you care about me. It worked just as well on you as it did on my father."

Mara shook her head and sat down with an exasperated sigh. "Only you could compare me to Darth Vader and make it sound like a compliment."

Dije, Luke, and a crowd of Dije's followers walked across an open-air pedestrian bridge between buildings.

"Have you considered?" Dije asked cryptically, mindful of the listening ears all around.

"I'm not ready."

"Alright then."

They came around a corner where some bums were handing out leaflets advertising various less than upstanding businesses. One of the bums looked at Luke and was suddenly terrified. He dropped his leaflets and looked behind him as if wondering if he would make it to the building if he ran. Apparently he decided he could not, because he just stood staring at Luke.

Luke looked back, looked at Dije, and they both shrugged.

"Do I know you?" Luke asked the bum.

"N—" It was harder to see the fear response of shaking or paleness or widened eyes in his species than in a human, but his terror was loud and clear to all the Force users.

Dije opened up a window in her mental castle and let in a bit of the wind of the alien's fear, and smelled the sickly sweetness of Vong flowers. "Peace brigade."

The alien shuddered and stood transfixed, obviously expecting to die.

Luke said, "If she's wrong about you, now's the time to say so."

Dije reached out both hands in the gesture that precedes calling lightning, but Luke put his flesh hand on top of her outstretched arms and pushed them down.

"Do you know how dangerous it is to do that, Luke? If I had already called the lightning, it would have grounded out in you."

Luke's slightly asymmetrical face twitched in a suppressed wince. "There was a time when you would not have even thought of killing someone who wasn't trying to kill you at that moment."

"They're the enemy."

"Not anymore. The war's over."

"The Peace Brigade tried to commit genocide against everyone with Force ability, your people and mine."

"I know. But let him go."

"Leia was right. You are too forgiving."

"When did she say that?"

"On the bridge of Dokhon Jux's star destroyer."

Luke waved a dismissive hand. "Leia was talking about Darth Vader."

"Genocide, remember?"

"Let him go. You've asked me to look back and be the person I used to be, before the Vong war. Why don't you take your own advice, Dije? You were once horrified by needless killing. The Force is life."

Dije nodded, and smiled faintly. "The Force is life. Alright. You're on your way back, I see. I'll return with you."

They walked on. Their followers walked around the bum and his dropped leaflets without a glance.

They came to the grand hotel where Dije and her court were staying. Luke cames to a stop outside, regarding the building.

"Buck up, Luke. You can do this. It's only a child, not a nest of rancors. You'll like little Darth."

"Darth. Didn't you once tell me you thought Vader was a poser?"

"I've revised my opinion. Like you, I now believe he was the Chosen One."

"So you named your son Darth Kun?"

"Of course not. Sith-ta is a patriarchal culture. His last name is Skywalker."

The news staggered Luke. He looked like he had tripped while he was not even taking a step. Dije made as if to catch him, but he regained his balance shortly.

"What else haven't you told me?"

"Come on." They went inside. The hotel was opulent, suitable for a head of state. Dije's party had taken over several floors, divided by group: Sith, Jedi, Fruitioners, Commons, and the Redeemed Ones. The Redeemed Ones were now gone, much to the relief of the hotel staff. Dije held her Court in the roof garden.

"Alright, there is one more thing. I had considerable genetic engineering done on him. I removed almost all the Nabooan influences. To make him stronger, you understand. There's not even all that much Sith in him. Nearly the only thing I left in from myself was a talent and appreciation for music, and of course my talent for the Noble Gift, which, by the way, you have just as strongly."

"Nabooan influences?"

"From your mother."

This stopped Luke in his tracks again, crunching to a halt near some potted livetberry vines. "You found my mother?"

"The genetic profile is unmistakable. Definitely from Naboo."

"But this is wonderful! Who was she?"

"I'm sorry, Luke, I only know racial traits, not a specific identity."

"Still, this is much more than I had before. Wait, you said you removed her."

"Yes. I started with you and worked backwards. The original had the highest midiclorian count of any living being, ever."

"The original what? And what are midiclorians? Wait, wait. You started with me and took out my mother. That leaves…"

"The Chosen One."

"Little Darth is a near clone of Anakin Skywalker."

"If you can picture a version of Anakin Skywalker who is musically inclined, then yes."

"The mind boggles." Luke closed his eyes and visibly inhaled, using a Jedi calming technique. "OK. I'm ready to meet him. Where is he?"

He popped into being sitting on a faux-stone fence right in front of Luke.

"Oh! The art of illusion."

"He has a talent for invisibility," Dije said. "Like you. That was the one Fallanassi technique you mastered."

"Hello, Darth. I'm your father."

"I know!" The boy grinned impishly and jumped off the wall into Luke's arms. Surprised, Luke caught him awkwardly. The boy was nearly Ben's height, and Ben had not spontaneously embraced his parents in years. Luke was touched. Despite everything, he felt an instant connection.

Young Darth dropped his shields and Luke was flooded with Light. For a moment it was an overwhelming pressure, like walking out into desert sunlight. Then Luke dropped his own mental shields and welcomed his child. He felt an incredible love, but then, an inexplicable jealousy. Oh, he realized. Because the Queen of the Sith raised a more loving son than I did.

I love you, father.

Luke fumbled with mind link for a moment. Then he thought back, I love you, son.

Young Darth pulled back, grinned, and Force-vaulted back on top of the wall.

Luke was left wondering, can anything really be that simple? Why isn't it that simple with Ben? What did I do wrong?

"I've been dying to meet you," Darth said. "I've watched all the holodramas about you over and over."

"That's true," Dije said. "He drives the whole Court to distraction. Of course, nobody had holodramas during the war, so there was a lot of novelty value in them. At first."

"Oh. You're a fan." Suddenly the simplicity of the love between them made more sense. It was easy for young Darth to love him without reservation because he had never seen him standing in the fresher unit brushing his teeth, or overheard him bickering with Mara about whether to let him join his cousin in the GAG. Luke felt a little better about the comparison between the two boys. Besides, Ben was a teenager. Darth would undoubtedly go through a parent-avoiding phase too.

"Want to hear me play Victory Chorus?"

"Sure."

The boy opened a beaded case slung over his shoulder. For a moment Luke's eye interpreted the silver object within as a lightsaber, but then he realized it was a musical instrument. Young Darth played a cheery tune on his flute.

The child seemed nearly transparent, radiating Light and Flow. He was happy, accomplished, loving, and confident. Everything Ben wasn't. This was a near twin to Anakin Skywalker? But it was a version of Anakin Skywalker who had been raised a prince, not a slave, and who had never lost his mother.

The song ended and Dije clapped, and Luke followed suit. "That's wonderful. You're very talented."

Luke met the rest of Dije's court and observed how Darth interacted with them. He saw how Dije's unreserved attachment to her boy provided emotional safety for him, despite, Luke wrongly supposed, living in an armed camp most of his life.

They joined a group of her followers and Coruscanti diplomats and glitterati, and Luke changed to a more neutral topic.

"You hold court here in the rooftop garden. And we met at the restored botanical gardens. Any other garden excursions planned?"

"If there are any more to see, sure. I understand the restoration of Coruscant is far from complete. How many pleasure gardens can it have?"

"Luxuries paid for with private money have come back much faster than the official reconstruction efforts. And it has been ten years since the war ended, after all. Still, Coruscant will probably never be the same. It's not just a matter of rebuilding. The whole ecology of the planet has changed. The Vongforming wasn't completed, but it was pervasive."

"The destruction on Sith-ta was nearly total, too. Except for the area protected by illusion, which we had to keep very small. The Vong completely destroyed the cities. Buildings, technology. Even the dead. When they burned off the cities, they killed the placebound spirits. Sith-ta is quiet now, except for the war dead. We've lost our history, our ancestors. And there isn't even enough air to go around, let alone food and water. Now that the Redeemed Ones have left the planet, all trace of Vonglife is gone. But bringing back the native ecosystem… I'm not sure it can be done, honestly. It might be as much a lost cause as cleansing Honoghr. But still, we have to try. It's our home."

"Why did you really come here, Dije?"

"Aside from seeing you again, and letting Darth meet you, and getting the Redeemed Ones to their new homeworld, you mean? To establish diplomatic relations. Why would you doubt that?"

"Sith-ta is a long way from Galactic Alliance space."

"The New Republic that preceded it was just as far. But they re-established the Blockade. If that happens again we wouldn't survive. We're barely making it as it is, sending mercenaries offworld to live and work and send home vital supplies. A lot of my people were unhappy with me when I signed the treaty banning the interstellar slave trade. It's not just the money. We have to get people off planet or we'll all starve. We need to import things. Food, water, medicine, technology. I don't just mean information and communications technology for education, either, I'm talking about basic technology like air scrubbers and waste recycling plants. A new Blockade would be nothing less than genocide. But we can't just come right out and say that in our negotiations with the GA government, in case that's exactly what they want: for my people to disappear forever. I don't trust the GA. I wish Leia were still President of the New Republic. She never liked me, but I could trust her not to approve of genocide."

"I don't think Niathal or Jacen would deliberately wipe out a whole planet. Jacen's not that far gone yet."

"Maybe not. But I hear Leia's on the other side now."

Luke shrugged. "The sides in this war don't really matter. This isn't like the Vong war. If the galaxy came to its senses we could all simply stop fighting and have peace tomorrow."

"The GA fell apart when the outside threat was removed. That's exactly what I'm afraid will happen to Sith-ta. All the factions support my rule because I'm the only person they can agree on. But sooner or later they're all going to wake up and realize it just isn't natural for Sith, Jedi, Fruitioners, and commons to all work together in harmony. Just the first two alone have enough differences between them."

"You and I do well enough. Being both Jedi and Sith, I mean."

"All my Jedi are Sith. Ethnically. And some by initiation as well. It's still a completely different mindset."

"Are you going to convert all your people?"

"No. This isn't the path for everyone. I've even had a few go the other way, start out to train as Jedi and decide to ask for Sith initiation instead."

"And do you initiate them?"

"Yes."

"I would think that would be heartbreaking."

"It is, Luke."

Ongreya came to see Luke at the Jedi Temple.

"Ongreya! How good to see you!"

"You too, Luke."

"How's the Psy Healer business?"

"Good. And I have a related sideline. Could we talk somewhere?"

"Sure."

They went to the deserted Council chamber. Coruscant twinkled with city lights out the window. Yoda had stood there once. And Obi-Wan. And Obi-Wan's apprentice.

"What's your reaction to the news that Jacen and Niathal have taken over until elections can be held?" Subtly, so that it would not be noticed, Ongreya exerted her power.

"Elections." Luke snorted. "I'll believe that when I see it."

"You don't think they'll step down for an elected leader?"

"Admiral Niathal will either retire or die soon. Just like Admiral Pellaeon retired. This war, from beginning to end, was staged to create this opportunity. Just like the Clone War was masterminded to bring Emperor Palpatine to power."

"You think Jacen is like the Emperor?"

"No. Palpatine got himself elected. Jacen staged a military coup."

"You think he's worse than the Emperor?"

"Not yet. I still believe he's redeemable."

"Because Palpatine was a Sith?"

"Jacen is a Sith. I'm sure now which one of them is Lumiya's apprentice."

"Which one of who?"

"I knew Lumiya's apprentice was highly placed in the GAG. And a Jedi. It had to be Jacen, or Ben. It's really too bad Mara has to kill Lumiya, because with Lumiya gone, Jacen becomes the Master. And Ben the apprentice. I still hope to save them both."

"And if you can't?"

"If I can't save Jacen I'll have to stop him. Ongreya, talking with you is like being inside a Sith truth sphere. Were you always this exhausting?"

"I was healing you then. And after that I was learning from you. This is different."

"True." Luke realized Ongreya was using her power on him, but he was so deep into the flow of truth that stopping her would feel like shutting down his mind just before an anticipated moment of great self-revelation.

"And what if you can't save Ben?"

"If he won't join me, I'll join him. I love Ben beyond right or wrong. Dije was right. I'm my father's son after all."

"What do you mean by that?"

"My father threw over his whole life for me, because he loved me. How can I do less for Ben? I tried to free myself of attachment, but Dije was right about me. I can't, and I don't want to. I choose love. I choose attachment. I choose passion. I choose as my father did."

"Attachment and passion are not the Jedi way."

"No. They're the Sith way. I've made my choice. I am a Sith. Stop, Ongreya. That's enough honesty for one day. So, what's your new sideline?"

"Reporting. For the Holonet News."

Luke gasped, "You're not recording now, are you?"

"Everything you just said went out live."

There was a deadly pause. "Then I guess I just made my resignation speech."

"You're resigning from being Grand Master?"

"From the Jedi Order. I just publicly admitted to being a Sith. Somehow I don't think it's going to be business as usual at the Jedi Council."

"I'm sorry. When I started the holocam I was only expecting some quotes about Jacen. But I don't think you need to resign. You only admitted to loving your son. That doesn't sound like much of a crime to me."

"Perhaps you're right. And I'm not the Sith they're looking for. Lumiya and Jacen are the dangerous ones."

Luke thought, I didn't reveal that I'm Dije's initiate. I'm still not really revealed as a Sith.

"Anyway, this only went out live on the Jedi subcast. The news will probably only want that first sound bite about the elections, and maybe some of the other quotes about Jacen."

"Ah. That's not too bad then. Your subscribers to the Jedi subcast are mostly fans and celebrity watchers, aren't they? And would-be Jedi, I suppose. Tell me something, Ongreya. When you were healing me all those years ago, did you install a back door in my mind?"

"Of course not. If those I heal couldn't trust me, I couldn't help anyone. Why?"

"Just trying to figure out how you got in here," Luke pointed to his head. "Not many people have ever successfully mind-tricked me. What was it, some subtle suggestion like"— he made an exaggerated parody of a Jedi hand gesture, and let his voice go theatrically potent and whispery—"spill your guts for the camera, Luke".

"No Jedi mind trick. I used my natural psy healer power. It's really not the same at all. A psy healer encourages people to talk about things they'd rather not face."

"Do me a favor, Ongreya. Never teach anybody that skill. If you can make me tell you truths I didn't even want to admit to myself, imagine what someone like Jacen would do with this power."

"It can't be taught. It isn't a Jedi ability. It's an inborn trait of some rare members of my species."

"Oh. Good."

A sculptor went to get a face record of Dije, because she's a Jedi Master.

Dije refused. "Perhaps you've mistaken me for my ancestor, Exar Kun. I don't want a statue of myself."

The sculptor, being a sensitive artist, felt insulted. He reported the quote to one of the Jedi Masters, who brought it up at the next Masters Council.

"I know this is a trivial matter compared to the decisions we've been discussing related to the civil disturbances, but…" He relayed the quote.

"She's right," Luke said. "These busts are nothing but self-aggrandizement. We could learn from kasenth. They adopted it from necessity, but isn't it ironic? The Queen of the Sith walks around in chains to symbolize her service to her people, while we make statues of ourselves. I'm following her example. Nobody's taking a face recording of me unless they're fitting me for a helmet."

Shocked stares.

Luke realized what he had said. He had not meant that to be a Vader reference. He decided not to take it back.

"Queen Dije was impressed with the level of luxury in the Jedi Temple. Sith-ta isn't the only world living in dire poverty, still a long way from recovering from the war. Many of the former New Republic and Imperial Remnant worlds are still dealing with crushing war burdens, even the ones where there wasn't any fighting, due to the influx of refugees. This display of opulence offends me."

"But Master Skywalker, the restoration of the Jedi Temple has been meticulously researched. We're putting everything back the way it was."

"I know, but I don't approve. Have we gained nothing from sweeping away the Old Order so that the New Order could rise? The New Order is a new beginning. We don't have to repeat the mistakes that made the Old Order so in love with itself that it had to be destroyed to bring Balance to the Force. And fulfill the Prophecy."

Luke realized he had never expressed that particular idea to non-Sith before. When he said it to Jacen, it was just a straw man. When he repeated it to Dije during their sparring match, he had realized he believed it. Now he had sprung it on the Masters' Council without warning.

Everyone was staring at him, even more shocked than before. Kyp Durron stirred uncomfortably. He had often opposed Luke over policy, but even he did not want to be the first to respond to this.

But there was one Master there who was not intimidated by Luke.

"Good kriffing heavens, Luke," Mara said. "Are you talking about the Prophecy of the Chosen One?"

"I am."

"You're invoking that about the decorating committee?!"

There were some scattered chuckles, and a lot of seat-shifting. Now that Mara had released the tension, Kyp spoke up. "Might I suggest discussing the Prophecy is best left to another time?"

Master Pey'slor spoke up in opposition, rippling his fur in discomfort. "I think we should talk about this now. First you invite the Sith to visit the Jedi Temple. Now you've implied you want to live kasenth, and follow their philosophy. And if I'm not mistaken, you further implied approval for the Jedi purges in the context of the fulfillment of the Prophecy of the Chosen One, which is widely accepted to refer to your father. Do you have something you want to tell us, Master Skywalker?"

Luke's eyes widened. Did they suspect him of being a Sith? If anyone was going to sniff out the treachery in their midst, it would surely be the Bothan.

Pey'slor continued, "Like, for example, what you said in Ongreya's last Jedi subcast?"

"Oh. Ah. So you watched that." They did suspect. Or at least Pey'slor did.

There were some muttered "What's?" and a few whispers to the effect that no one else knew what Pey'slor was talking about. Few real Jedi actually watched Ongreya's Jedi subcast. But Pey'slor, like all Bothans, had a hunger for information and a nose for shifting alliances, and he found the subcast to be an occasional gold mine.

But Pey'slor had referred only to recent events. Luke reasoned that Pey'slor must not know about the long-ago initiation. Luke's secret was still safe. His first impulse was to ride his reputation by asking, are you accusing me of being a Sith? But that kind of confrontation could end up with someone asking him directly whether he was, and then he would have to say either yes or no. And even though he was practiced at keeping secrets, including an awful lot of old Rebel Alliance and New Republic military secrets, he was not practiced at directly lying to other Jedi. If he were directly asked he did not think he could deceive the entire Council.

After an awkward pause, Luke responded, "Only that we could learn a thing or two from them. Honestly, can you really think of a moral objection to kasenth? Other than it being Sith?"

"Being Sith is quite enough," someone else said. "There should not be friendship between the Jedi and the Sith."

"Most of the Queen's people don't even follow the Dark Side," Luke said calmly. Then his eyes twinkled in sudden humor. "And I thought it was only old pricklies like me who even still believe there is a Dark Side."

A couple of the younger Masters glanced at each other, as if wondering if fifty seven year old Grand Master Skywalker actually knew what that slang word meant.

"We believe," Kyp said. "Maybe not in the starkly binary way of the Old Order, but even the youngsters who grew up in the Balance Way would still recognize it if they saw it. And when it has a tattoo on its forehead it's hard to miss."

"I realize it's been strange to have them here on Coruscant. But the Jedi and the Sith were on the same side in the Vong war, even if I was the only one off Sith-ta who knew about that at the time. The secrecy was necessary during the war. And the Sith tied up significant Vong resources and personnel, which made a huge difference to the overall war effort. On Sith-ta, Sith and Jedi fought against the Vong in the same army, under the same leader. They already consider us friends and allies. They mean us no harm."

"Forgive us if we don't share your optimism, Master Skywalker," Pey'slor said. He sensed the moment of opportunity had passed, and the Grand Master was no longer vulnerable. A few moments ago his Bothan instincts had told him to attack; now they told him to pretend to friendship.

Luke made a dismissive gesture. "I completely understand."

Mara said, "Can we get to the meat here? Nobody is ever going to get Luke to stop believing everybody has a good side. Even the Sith."

Thank you Luke thought at Mara. She acknowledged with a barely perceptible nod.

Master Sebatyne the Barabel said, "Master Jade Skywalker iz right. We don't need to hold a vote on thiz issue of the Sith. The GA will make a treaty with them whether the Jedi Council approvez or not."

They went on to the next item. Luke allowed himself a silent sigh of relief.

Luke woke up with a hollow feeling of wrongness. It was morning, and Mara wasn't there. He vaulted out of bed, pulled his lightsaber to him with the Force, and prowled the apartment until he was sure there was no physical danger at that moment. Then he found Mara's note.

She had gone to kill Lumiya.

Luke dressed quickly and raced up to the landing yard on the roof. He levitated R2 into the droid socket and hopped into his X-wing. He was in deep space when it felt it: a terrible wrenching in the Force.

Mara died.

Luke wept into his sleeve and pushed the X-wing harder, as if he could catch up to her death if he raced time. Blindly, relying on the Force, he landed the fighter and took off into a series of caves.

He found Ben weeping over Mara's body.

At first Luke thought she was still alive, because her body had not disappeared into the Force. Then, with a sudden sharp fear in his gut, he opened himself to his surroundings, searching for a placebound spirit. Fearing Mara had died in the darkness. But he did not find one.

Mara was simply dead.

Boba Fett examined the holocomm base and decided it was not booby trapped. He activated it, and an image of Luke Skywalker appeared.

"Nice holocomm," Fett grated. "But I don't need any presents from you, if you want to talk me out of going after Jacen."

"If you still want first crack at him, you'd better hurry up," Luke said. His voice was whispery and calm, but nonetheless menacing. "If I catch him without his minions first, I'm not leaving anything for you."

"What, didn't you call here to try to save him from me?"

"Save him? I don't want to save him. He killed my wife. I want to gnaw his marrow bones and wear his skin for bootleather. And if he's lucky, I'll kill him first." Luke made agitated motions, looking like he was keeping himself from pacing only because the holocomm needed him to stay in one spot to transmit his image. He began to talk louder, and there was a disturbing set to his face and the lines of his body. "I want to kill him in the height of his Sith power so he becomes a placebound spirit, and then I'll scatter the foundations of the building he's bound to. A stone into the swamps of Nal Hutta. One into the lava of Mustafar. Maybe one down the Sarlacc's gullet, that would be fun, wouldn't it?"

"You're insane."

"You can throw in the one that goes down the Pit of Carkoon, if you like. If you can devise a way to get Jacen to a battleground of my choosing. You and I should work together. You get his GAG goons out of the way and I'll kill Jacen. You don't really have a chance against him without me, you know. Not now that Jacen's a Sith. But I can take him, if I can catch him alone."

"And what are you offering me in this deal? Aside from a chunk of presscrete to toss to the monster of my choice."

"What do you want from this deal?"

"Five million."

"Don't you want Jacen dead?"

"Five million. Take it or leave it."

"I haven't got five million."

"Too bad." Boba Fett leaned forward and turned off the holographic image of the Jedi. "I'll get my own revenge in my own time."

Ben didn't know who to go to. The Jedi Council? Jaina? His buddy from the GAG? No, that wouldn't be safe. Jacen was the head of the GAG, and a GAG member was obligated to a certain amount of loyalty. He didn't want anybody to warn Jacen about Luke. And he didn't want to bring Jacen's wrath down on Slate. He shouldn't involve a Galactic Alliance Guard officer in Jedi business anyway.

Jedi business. The Council it was, then. If they'd even let a fourteen year old into the room, much less listen to him. If they even met when Luke wasn't chairing the meeting. How did the Council cope with absences of its members, anyway? Ben had never really wanted to know anything about how meetings were run before, and had not paid attention.

He set off for the Jedi Temple, mentally rehashing the terrifying conversation he had just had with his father. Ben had already been afraid of Luke before he had a reason to be. He had been living with Jacen, until he overheard Jacen and Lumiya talking, and realized they were friends. Then he had crashed on the sofa at his GAG buddy's apartment. But after Mara's death he had tried to go "home", to his parents' house. It had lasted three hours.

Ben had been distraught and frightened. But he had summoned the courage to ask his father, "Do you know how scary you are right now?"

And Luke had said, "Yes, I do. But at least I don't breathe funny." He had pushed him away with sick humor and reached for him with his flesh hand at the same time, and Ben had actually said, "I don't hug Sith Lords." To which Luke had replied, "A wise policy, I'm sure." More humor. Ben had fled with no clear plan, only knowing he had to get out of there.

Where would he go tonight? Tonight would have to take care of itself. There was today to get through first.

Before, the two people he would have gone to for advice and comfort were mom and Jacen.

Ben found the Council wasn't meeting, but there were a few of its members in the small study room off the library. He noticed Master Kyp Durron, and Master Cilghal the Mon Calamari, and he noticed Luke was not there. He walked in and announced, "I need your help!" before he even saw that Jaina was there. So it was just a group of Jedi, not a truncated Council. "I need your advice. Dad's gone totally over the edge."

The Jedi regarded him, some with pity, others with respect. It seemed they were going to let him speak. Perhaps it was only respect for his grief, but he would take any kind he could get.

"We found out who killed Mom. It was Jacen."

"Jacen?!" Jaina shouted. Then she visibly inhaled and used a Jedi breathing technique to calm down.

"Dad's gone ballistic. He thinks he's Vader."

Jaina nodded. "That's always been his fear, and my mom's, too. That one of the grandchildren of Anakin Skywalker would end up just like him."

"No, you don't understand! He keeps talking about the Skywalker legacy, but that's not what he means. He says it's the father's job to kill the Emperor. And it's the job of the son of Skywalker to save his father. But he wants me to wait until after he kills Jacen."

The silence was absolute. Nobody was going to interrupt this.

"When he said he had to prepare to avenge mom and then went on a shopping trip to a jewelry stand I thought he'd gone insane, but it's worse. Crazy I could deal with. But I didn't mean off the edge crazy, I meant off the edge fallen. He came back with a flawless ruby. He switched out the jewel in his lightsaber. It's red. He thinks he's Vader."

Kyp broke the uncomfortable silence. "As tempting as it is to let Luke kill Jacen, we can't. That kind of vengeance is a very long way down the dark path. You're very right to be concerned, Ben. We should go talk to him."

"No! He's right about one thing, I'm the only one who could reach him now. If you go it'll end in a fight. What I want to know is, what should I do about it? He asked me to wait. He also asked me to stay with him, in case he fails and Jacen kills him instead. Because these might be our last days together. But I can't just hang around the apartment watching holos and ordering in from the Saheelindeeli deli while he stalks around saying he hates Jacen with an all-consuming Sith passion, and please pass the salt. One moment he's on the holocomm talking to Boba Fett and the next moment he wants a hug. How do I deal with this? I'm scared. I'm scared and I'm not ashamed of it."

"Now I'm scared too," said Kyp.

"I second that motion," put in Jaina. Nobody laughed at the feeble attempt at humor.

Cilghal asked, "What did he speak with the Mandalore about?"

"He tried to hire him, but he didn't have enough money."

Cilghal said, "I think perhaps we should all go talk to him, together."

It was the Senate building. Luke recognized the white steps and plinths, although they were slightly fuzzy.

Luke called out, "En Garde, Emperor Jacen. Or whatever your name is now. Darth something, I expect."

"Caedus. Darth Caedus. And you?"

Luke nearly responded, Darth Vengeus. He stopped himself, and wondered, where did that come from? Instead he said, "In the true tradition we keep our own real names."

"You're really serious about this true tradition stuff, aren't you? I thought you were just trying to play head games with me, before."

Luke said, "Maybe I was. Maybe I was just trying to get you away from Lumiya. But she's gone now, and you're the Emperor. You are an heir of the debased tradition of only two, magicians hiding in cloakrooms. I am an initiate of Queen Dije Kun. It's time for Sith versus Sith."

"Even you can't deflect a hundred blaster bolts at once."

"My hate has made me powerful."

Dije was standing by, out of sight. She cast illusion for him, turning Jacen's followers' weapons into snakes that attack their bearers.

For the first time Jacen knew fear. He recognized the lost art of illusion, used in such a quintessentially Sith fashion.

Luke rushed him and ignited the red saber at the last moment. Jacen was surprised, and had a critical moment of inattention. And Luke… saw the Vision melt around him and snapped back to reality.

Dije would never help him kill Jacen. Dije wanted to save him. Dije had been trying to save Luke since the day they met.

That was the problem with trying to assess the outcome of a combat strategy by looking at the future through the Force. It was impossible to fool himself for long. He would have to do this without Dije's illusions, and get Jacen away from his troops before trying to fight him.

The red lightsaber would have shock value, though. Luke would take any edge he could get in this fight. He was still the galaxy's most accomplished lightsaber duelist, but that did not necessarily mean the galaxy's best. Jaina really was a better pilot than he was now; could Jacen be a better swordsman? Even if Luke was better with a blade, that did not guarantee victory. Jacen's new Sith powers were an unknown. If Jacen had become a true Dark Lord, the way that title was meant among the true Sith, then Luke would be a fool to even carry a lightsaber in his presence.

But Jacen had shown no evidence of possessing the Noble Gift. Nor had he ever shown any hint that he might develop it someday, as his little brother Anakin had. As Luke himself had. As Anakin Skywalker had. Dije had told him long ago that the ability to fix electronic devices – including droids and ships -- with the Force was a sign that person carried the potential of breakthrough. A child who fixed ships instinctively could grow up to be a Dark Lord. So if anyone around here was likely to suddenly develop the ability to cast Force-lightning, it was Luke.

He wasn't sure how he felt about that. Was fear holding him back? His memory of being the target of the Emperor's Force-lightning could still make him wince, after all these years. Dije had told him, long ago on the Sith Raider, than she had had to knock him out with Force-lightning in order to rescue him. It was just as well that was locked under the memory cap along with all the other things that had happened that day.

But he did not think he was afraid of the lightning the way Dije had once been afraid of lightsabers. Experimentally, Luke looked around for some electronic gear to reach out to in the Force. His eye settled on one of Ben's games, sitting forgotten on a shelf, covered with dust. He reached out with the Force, visualized the circuits inside it, the way electricity would have to flow to turn it on-- and turned it on. His effort was rewarded with blinking lights. Luke tried to smile at his accomplishment, but he was still swimming in grief, and found he could not.

Luke walked over to the shelf and turned off the game. If this was the precursor to the Noble Gift, then he did not find it frightening at all. And that was good. But he was no closer to devising a strategy to separate Jacen from his security troopers. He had to focus. He had to work with what he had—which was quite a lot—not wish for even more powers.

So why was he still here in this apartment instead of hunting Jacen? Why wasn't he out there watching, just patiently waiting for Jacen to come out of the GAG building? Stakeouts were more Mara's line than Luke's.

The pain lanced freshly through his heart. Could it be he did not really want to avenge her? Is that why he was still here, brooding instead of acting? If he killed Jacen to avenge Mara, Leia would be coming to avenge Jacen. And then Ben would kill Leia, to avenge Luke. And then Jaina would kill Ben, to avenge Leia. And—who knows? Maybe Darth would complete the set and kill Jaina, just because. And that would be the end of the Skywalkers. Except for the Prince of the Sith. Who was going to go home and spend his life holding his people together in a battle against extinction on a ravaged world. Maybe the galaxy would be better off.

Luke went into the bedroom that still smelled like Mara. He dug into the back of the closet and pulled out the black suit he had worn to Jabba's palace thirty years ago, and put it on. It was a little tight. But he was confident he could still fight in it. He put a black cape around his shoulders and clipped the red lightsaber to his belt, and strode out of the apartment, his cape flowing behind him.

The team of Kyp, Cilghal, Ben, and Jaina didn't find Luke at the apartment. Ben went off by himself, thinking he could probably find him through the Force. The others went off to figure out what to do.

Ben found Luke in the Force. He was on rooftop across from the GAG HQ.

Ben went to face Luke and found Darth there before him. Luke knelt on the ground, head down, crying. Darth stood beside him, arms around his black-clad shoulders.

Darth looked up when Ben came onto the roof. "It's alright now," said the boy, with just the barest hint of a Sith-ta accent. "He's back in the Light."

"Hey, that's my job! I'm his son."

"So am I. You must be Ben." He offered mind link to Ben, but Ben pushed him away and ran off.

He ran down, down, down, to the part of Coruscant that actually had streets. Where crumbling masonry and trash were eaten away by stray Vonglife in the eternal shadow of the buildings.

"Son of Skywalker," Ben muttered. "Saved his father. But Mara isn't avenged yet. That's my job! She was my mother! Jacen won't get away with this!"

A beggar accosted Ben and Ben Force-pushed him onto the filthy street. "Leave me alone or you'll be holding your begging bowl with your other hand." Ben stepped over him and stalked down the street. That had felt good. Mostly. Some small part of himself knew that had not been the sort of thing a proper Jedi ought to do. But Ben had never been a proper Jedi.

"I'll get revenge for mom. You go back to your moping. I'll go to Jacen. Convince him to take me back. Wait for my opportunity and strike."

Luke ejected from the wreckage of his X-wing, and closed down his Force-presence until he felt dead even to himself. So far, so good.

He used the Force to pull himself to the hull of the black Star Destroyer, and cut a hole with his lightsaber, which was still red. He entered the ship and found Jacen's secret room full of living Vong torture apparati. Ben was in one of the things, his body twined with thorns and blistered with acids.

A red rage came over Luke. He went for Jacen without a word, and nearly got him through the back with his lightsaber before Jacen sensed him and turned around. Their blades met. If Jacen was surprised by the color of Luke's blade, he didn't show it.

They fought back and forth across the room, light and shadow leaping from the clashing of the lightsabers, forcing each other into the torture-vines, leaping and Force-pushing and attacking each other's minds.

Ben got free. "My kill!" Ben growled. "This is my kill!"

Concentrating on the more dangerous opponent, Jacen did not bring his lightsaber around in time to completely avoid Ben's attack. He took a wound deep into the lung.

Then he cut off Ben's head. Swish, sizzle, thunk. The head fell onto the deckplates. The body followed a moment later.

"BEN!!!!" Luke shrieked. His eyes went wild. Nothing in the universe made any sense. Nothing, except vengeance. Nothing, except hate. The darkness rolled in like fog, thick and tingling with the potential of a thunderstorm.

A sudden roil of fear came from Jacen as he felt Luke draw power.

Luke had never known such hate. The darkness called to his blood, filling all the empty places within. Jacen would never be as powerful as Luke, no matter how many Sith arts he learned. Jacen didn't have the potential. He was a generation farther away from the Chosen One than Luke was.

Grief turned to sudden exhilaration as the power filled him. He stretched out his hands and summoned the power of fanged serpents.

Jacen went down, bitten, poisoned, immobilized with ropes of snakes. And Luke wasn't finished. The snakes coiled around Jacen, holding him down, but they were no longer connected to Luke's hands. Instead of the art of illusion, something else crackled around Luke's hands now. His artificial hand burned out in a terrible pop of smoke and sparks, and then the lightning issues from his fingertips, living flesh and dead circuitry alike.

Jacen screamed.

"Now, Jacen, you will know the true way of the Sith." His voice was oddly calm, all his hate pouring out through his hands. But Luke did not say, The Force Is Life. This was not initiation, not rebirth, but death.

Jacen screamed and screamed and screamed and finally was silent. The body of Jacen was still. He was dead.

Luke let the flow of power fail in his hands. Fail: how utterly he had failed. He had killed Jacen, yes. But Ben was dead.

Sometime during the battle, Luke had stopped concealing himself in the Force. People who thought he was dead now felt his presence, and were relieved; and then they were afraid. They felt his darkness.

Leia's mind brushed his, briefly. She did not try to say anything. He felt her grief at his death turn to another grief, a less pure grief, tinged with dread. Leia was coming to kill him.

Then Luke felt little Darth in his mind. Father? Father, it's your son. I love you. Come back to the Light.

No, Luke replied. I'm your father, but I was Ben's dad.

Luke cried then. He turned around to cradle Ben's body in his arms and found no body to hold. Ben had become one with the Force. And Luke knew that if he did not come back to the Light, he would never be able to join him there. But he could not let go of his pain.

I know what to do, said Darth in the mindlink.

Do? There's nothing anyone can do. Ben is dead.

Only if time still flows one way, said Darth. Go to the Great Machine.

Luke stepped up onto the metal platform. The spotlight came on. The alien words hissed in his mind, "What is the first lesson and the last?"

"The Force is Life," said Luke.

"Welcome, Sith. What do you want?"

"I want my son. I want Ben to live."

"I can make that happen," said the Great Machine. "At which point in history do you wish to effect this change?"

Luke thought hard.

Pivotal events. How far back to change them? Reverse Mara's death? Reverse Jacen's capture by the Vong, which was probably when he went bad? Prevent Jacen's birth? Prevent Darth Vader? Why stop there… prevent the whole tradition of only-two. Stop Darth Bane.

No. He could not erase the entire history of the galaxy. The further back he meddled, he more likely he would create a universe-destroying paradox. No. All he wanted was to save Ben. If that was selfish, so be it. It was also something that could be accomplished without tearing apart the fabric of the universe. Ben had no special destiny. He was supposed to die; therefore he didn't matter to the cosmos. To the Force. He could be saved without messing up everybody else's destiny.

"The battle where he died. Bring me back to five minutes before he died."

"Granted," said the Great Machine.

Luke was back in the middle of the lightsaber duel with Jacen. He barely parried an incoming thrust. This time Jacen was surprised: Luke's blade had suddenly gone green.

"My kill," demanded Ben, his arms trailing torture thorns and his skin covered with blisters.

Luke reached down to the very most dark and deceptive part of his Sith soul and lied. "Jacen didn't kill Mara," he told Ben. "Alema did."

The fight wound down somehow. Luke was winning, but he convinced Ben to leave and they escaped. Jacen was still alive. Still out to rule the galaxy with an iron fist. Still had to be stopped.

But Ben was alive.

Jacen was a problem for the Council to solve together. For war to take care of. That didn't matter. It was all just some future history. And Luke was done with history. All that mattered was Ben. And Ben lived.

Luke let go of his grief, and his hate. He returned to the Light.

On Korriban, a white eyed Sith sensed a sea change in the universe. It was time for the One Sith ascendant. Time to put down the upstart Jacen, whom Lumiya had not been supposed to train. It was time for Sith Versus Sith.

The End.


End file.
